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March 29, 2008

Vigo sees significant increase in number of registered voters

By Howard Greninger

TERRE HAUTE — As presidential candidates target Indiana, Vigo County residents have until April 7 to register to vote in the state’s May 6 primary election.

Residents can register to vote, as well as transfer their registration if they have moved, until 4 p.m. on that day at the county’s Voter Registration Office. The office is at Sixth Street and Wabash Avenue. For more information, call the Voter Registration Office at (812) 462-3393.

As of Friday, Vigo County had 75,784 registered voters, up from the last general election in November 2006 with 75,211 voters. However, the biggest difference in the numbers is the ability to keep a more accurate count, said Debbie Kirk, director of voter registration.

The county has had 3,354 voter registration applications, as of Friday, since November.

“Some of those are new applications and some are updates to old files. We are now getting notice from Vital Statistics on a county and state level [about deaths of voters] and every time someone from Vigo County registers in another county, we get a notice and that voter gets canceled [from the Vigo County roster],” Kirk said.

“We are really doing a lot of cleaning out [of voter registration records]. While the numbers aren’t changing that much, who they are is changing by a lot,” Kirk said. “If we processed 3,300 since November and our [total registration] roll has only increased by a couple in a year and a half, we must have been taking a lot out, too.”

Many agencies have been working to get voters to the polls.

On March 15, the League of Women Voters of Vigo County, a nonpartisan political group, with the aid of groups such as retired teachers, the Red Hat Society and the Vigo County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, staged a voter registration drive in Terre Haute at 22 businesses, plus five branches of the Vigo County Public Library and one business in Riley.

“We got about 200 new voter registrations,” said Judy Buchholz, president of the league. “That was very encouraging. One of the missions of the League of Women Voters is to encourage citizen participation in the democratic process and voting is one of the highest forms of participation in our democratic process. The more people in the population that we can register to vote, the more voters we will have and that will increase the opportunity for good government.”

Student clubs at Indiana State University have joined forces in the voter registration effort.

The ISU College Democrats and ISU College Republicans conducted a bipartisan registration drive Wednesday.

Marcel Oliveira, president of the ISU College Democrats, said a bipartisan drive “is definitely the way to go when it comes to registering and educating voters about the election in general, the process, and spreading the democratic feeling more than trying to campaign for a particular candidate of particular parties,” he said.

Each club had informational sheets instructing students on how to mail in voter registration forms or to register in person. The sheets informed students that copies of their driver’s license would be needed when mailing a registration and is required when voting at the polls in May.

“The basic principle was to inform people how to vote. We feel there is a great percentage of the population, especially on campus, that doesn’t know how to register, or if registered don’t know how to vote” because of not being familiar with the photo ID requirement, poll locations or voting times, Oliveira said.

“This voter registration was targeting the primary on May 6, particularly on the Democrat side. It is a hot race, as the candidates are physically present, with Hillary Clinton coming here,” he said.

While not yet scheduled, Barack Obama also plans to come to Terre Haute. Republican John McCain has visited Indianapolis. “I think people are definitely paying attention. When you have a [voter registration drive] amidst this atmosphere of politics, it brings out people,” Oliveira said.

Ryan Grossman, chair of the ISU College Republicans, said that while the presidential election in Indiana “is not as an important role” for GOP voters, county elections in Vigo County are of interest.

Republicans at the county level “have four contested Republican races [judge of Vigo County Superior Court Division 5; county recorder; county commissioner; Vigo County Council] which has never happened in Vigo County, according to the knowledge of various Republican leaders,” Grossman said.

“In Vigo County, it’s especially important for people to register, as it is the first step in voting, and to have a record voting turnout for the youth vote and a record turnout overall,” Grossman said.

Grossman said both ISU clubs intend to conduct more bipartisan voter registration drives later in the year, before the November general election.

Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

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