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Registration drives by Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and liberal-leaning groups are fueling the increase, along with a high level of interest in the presidential race, state and local officials say.
“From all indications, this certainly is a record, which suggests there is very high interest in this election cycle,” said Nat Robinson, election division administrator for the Government Accountability Board. “The democratic process is working.”
About 135,000 residents have registered to vote for the first time since the beginning of this year, bringing the total number of voters to more than 3.4 million, he said. Another 169,000 have updated their registration with their current address or new name.
Precise comparisons to previous presidential elections are not available, Robinson said, since the state did not have a computerized statewide database until 2006. But he said, by all accounts, the figures this year are higher than ever.
Voter registration has been so intense in Milwaukee, that it’s becoming hard to find anyone in the state’s largest city who hasn’t registered, said Robert Kraig, program director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. His group, which has registered nearly 5,000 voters, is switching its focus to Racine.
“Our folks are finding more people who are already registered than we can remember in the past,” Kraig said. “That’s a good omen for turnout and the excitement around this election.”
The new voters could benefit Obama’s campaign in Wisconsin, the site of close presidential contests in 2000 and 2004. Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry edged out George Bush both times — but only by 4,700 votes and 11,000 votes, respectively.
Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain, have both made a big effort here this year, making campaign stops and blanketing television screens with their ads.
Kathleen Dolan, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor and expert on political participation, said the new voters could be enough to put the state in the solidly Democratic column — if they ultimately vote in large numbers for Obama.
“Obama’s whole rock star thing seems to engage young people particularly in a state like Wisconsin where he has a lot of appeal,” she said. “But when you lay your success on these first-time voters, you’re taking a chance. This glamor, this engagement has to last through November.”
Early voter registration efforts are not usually a priority in Wisconsin campaigns because the state allows voters to register on Election Day, unlike most others. But the Obama campaign is bucking that tradition, sending workers in search of young people, minorities and others who like Obama but may not have voted previously.
Obama campaign spokesman Phil Walzak said the effort is paying dividends, but he declined to say how many new voters it had yielded.
“We have a message of bringing people together, changing the way politics are done and that’s why we’ve had success appealing to new voters,” he said.
Rather than finding new voters, Republicans have focused on identifying McCain supporters and making sure they turn out on Election Day, said the state party’s executive director Mark Jefferson.
Beyond the campaigns, liberal-leaning groups such as ACORN and Citizen Action of Wisconsin are conducting voter registration drives across the state.
In Milwaukee, the election commission has received more than 35,000 registration cards from the drives. About one-quarter or more of those applications represent new voters while the rest are voters updating their information or duplicates, said Sue Edman, the commission’s executive director.
In the state’s liberal stronghold of Madison, the clerk’s office has received more than 30,000 new and updated voter registration forms this year. That’s about six times as many as the office had received at this time in 2006, when turnout for the governor’s race was as high as in many presidential elections, clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said.
“It does seem that we are getting a lot of registrations early, which is a good thing,” she said. “People will be on the poll list on Election Day, and they won’t have to stand in line.”
