New voter sign-ups up

How do you register 60,000 new voters? One at a time.

At the Department of Motor Vehicles office on East Sahara Avenue last week, Ana Ramos was following Mike Wilson into the parking lot. The 24-year-old Wilson admitted he wasn't registered to vote, but didn't stop walking by Ramos and her clipboard.

Walking alongside him, Ramos bugged Wilson, told him it was easy to fill out the form, that this year's election was going to be important and it was the right thing to do. It would take only a minute, she said.

They were almost to Wilson's car by the time he relented and started writing down his address.

For Ramos, 22, a canvasser for the social advocacy group ACORN, it was another small victory. Signing up voters, not the $8 per hour she earns, is what makes it worth her while to spend the day in 100-plus-degree heat chasing people down, she says.

As for Wilson, he was warming to the idea of voting for the first time.

"It's time for a change," the Las Vegas audio engineer said after filling out the form. "I've been avoiding it for a long time. I might as well try and make a difference."

Wilson signed up as a Democrat but doesn't know for whom he'll vote.

"I'm not really into the whole politics thing," he said.

People like Ramos and Wilson are the faces behind voter registration numbers, in Nevada and across the country, that are climbing at staggering rates this year as Americans sign up to participate in a historic presidential election.

Analysts have attributed much of the surge to interest in the election and enthusiasm for Democratic candidate Barack Obama among young people and blacks, traditionally two groups that register and vote at lower rates than the population as a whole.

But as a day spent with canvassers showed, the new voters aren't lining up at the county building to register themselves. Rather, they're being aggressively recruited.

"We approach them. We bring the issue to them," said Chris Edwards, ACORN's Nevada field director. "We don't wait for them to come to us."

ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to have collected 60,000 new voter registrations in Clark County since February. The group, which works to promote the interests of lower-income people, is aiming for 100,000 by Labor Day.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he has never seen such a deluge. "The biggest year we ever had was 2004. That year, we processed almost 300,000 (voter) applications -- 291,000, to be exact. We're running double that rate right now."

As of this point in 2004, the Clark County Election Department had received 81,000 applications; this year, it's 161,000, he said.

According to the Census, nationally about two-thirds of those eligible to vote -- U.S. citizens who are over 18 and have not had their voting rights revoked for a criminal conviction -- are registered; in Nevada, it's just 56 percent.

ACORN's canvassers, drawn from the ranks of the lower income themselves, work outside welfare offices, free clinics and downmarket stores.

Although the group is nonpartisan, it has an overt agenda of making government do more for the poor; it sees getting lower-income people to vote as a way of forcing politicians to address their concerns.

ACORN's tactics are controversial.

The group has drawn accusations of voter fraud and criminal investigations in several states. Last year, authorities in Washington state brought felony charges against ACORN workers for filing false voter registrations.

Some ACORN workers pleaded guilty and went to jail, while the organization paid $25,000 and agreed to have its registration efforts monitored in a settlement with Washington state authorities.

Lomax said while he supports the goal of getting more people registered to vote, he sees rampant fraud in the 2,000 to 3,000 registrations ACORN turns in every week.

"Whenever people get paid to register voters, those individuals have an incentive to meet their quota, and that results sometimes in people doing things they shouldn't," Lomax said.

His office sends out thousands of letters based on registration applications that don't have valid addresses or Social Security numbers, or have other suspicious irregularities.

The office also receives frequent complaints from people who have been notified of changes in their registration that they say they didn't make.

"There's no question it's a crime. It says right there on the form it's a felony to put down false voter registration information," said Lomax, who is working with authorities to see what can be done. "It's very difficult to prosecute someone on something like this, because you have to prove it's intentional and determine whose fault it is."

Lomax recommends voters check the Election Department's Web site at www.accessclarkcounty.com/ depts/election/ or call 455-VOTE (8683), to make sure their registration is in order and avoid problems when they go to vote.

Edwards, a former union organizer, dismissed the allegations of fraud as the politically motivated accusations of elites who feel threatened by the prospect of the proletariat storming the polls.

"Robin Hood was controversial, too," he said. "When you are in the vanguard, working for the working class, there are always going to be people who don't want you to succeed for their own selfish reasons."

Edwards and the political organizers who work under him hold orientation sessions every afternoon at ACORN's Las Vegas headquarters, a threadbare suite in a threadbare building in the Commercial Center complex on Sahara east of the Strip.

The group plans to open a second office, in Henderson, this week.

On a recent afternoon, the room on Sahara held about 20 people, a down-and-out looking group drawn to the spot by fliers promising hourly work they could start right away. "WE GOT JOBS!!" the fliers blared.

Organizer Alicia Estrada asked them to state their names, where they came from and "something you would like to change about society."

It took some prodding.

People mentioned their interactions with police and the criminal justice system, the price of gasoline, money for schools, income inequality.

"My name's Deborah. I'm from Wisconsin," a woman said. "I just came here because I need a job."

"What would you like to change about society?" Estrada said.

"More jobs, I guess."

Estrada told the would-be canvassers what they were in for.

"I used to be a cashier when I was in college. I'm sure a lot of you had jobs like that, where it's just a routine. You spend all day scanning stuff and putting it in bags, and at the end of the day, did you really make a difference? No, you didn't. The next morning you're just going to do the same thing, and nothing's going to change.

"Canvassing is hard. It's 100-some degrees out. We pay $8 an hour, but it's not about the $8 an hour. You encounter so many people doing this job, so many different stories. People who lost their homes. People who just became citizens. We registered an 82-year-old man who never voted before. He said, 'It's a historic election year. This time I'm going to vote.' That's what this job is about."

Estrada explained what information goes on the voter registration form, that all the forms need to be turned in and that it's illegal to falsify them.

She emphasized getting phone numbers so that the organization can call the new voters on Election Day and make sure they vote.

She cautioned that canvassers cannot tell people for whom to vote or with what party to register.

Then she turned the floor over to Edwards. Drawing on a white board at the front of the room, he gave a rabble-rousing presentation.

"It's one of the most reliable and harmful axioms in American politics," he said, writing it on the board: "POOR PEOPLE DON'T VOTE."

"So, if the policy is made by elected officials, and elected officials work for their constituency, and their constituency is all the people who vote, and poor people don't vote, who are they not working for? It's very simple."

It's a vicious cycle, Edwards said, pacing the room and sometimes shouting for emphasis.

"So how do we break the cycle? We have to blow this up, break this axiom that poor people don't vote," he said. "We have to destroy it. You might ask me, 'Is this class warfare, Chris? Is that what you're saying: "Off with the rich people's heads?"' No, no, exactly the opposite. We believe equality of representation and opportunity benefits the entire society, rich and poor alike."

There was applause when he finished his speech, leaving the room to Estrada, who started signing up the people who wanted to give it a try. Several didn't, and filed out of the room.

Down at the Department of Motor Vehicles office on East Sahara Avenue, Ana Ramos was catching the last of the customers as they trickled out after closing time. The day's high temperature was 109.

Dressed in a lacy black tank top and baggy blue-and-white striped pants, she had a tube of sunscreen sticking out of one back pocket and a little American flag on a plastic pole sticking out of the other.

Vanessa Curiel, 19, was studying the voter form reluctantly. She was trying to figure out which box to check for political party affiliation.

"Republican, that's McCain," Ramos explained. "Democrat is Obama."

"Obama?" Curiel said. "What's that?"

"The guy that's running for president," Ramos said.

"Oh, OK," Curiel said, checking the Democrat box.

Curiel said voting was not something she thought about much, and she probably would not have registered if she hadn't been asked.

"I want to vote for president. Maybe this president will make it better. Things are pretty bad right now."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.