Efforts on for last-minute registration

Alicia Robinson

If you haven’t already been accosted by someone urging you to

register to vote on Nov. 2, you probably haven’t been to the grocery

store, post office, airport ...

Monday is the last day to register for the November election, and

political activists of all flavors have been trying everything,

everywhere, to make sure people exercise their democratic rights.

“It’s been really busy,” said Orange County Registrar of Voters

spokesman Brett Rowley. “It certainly seems that there’s a lot of

interest in this election.”

As of Friday, the registrar’s rolls showed 1.45 million voters in

Orange County, of which 705,101 voters -- close to half -- are

registered as Republicans and 441,139 are registered Democrats.

Newport Beach’s totals show nearly 61% of the city’s 59,189

registered voters consider themselves Republican, while about 20%

cast their ballots as Democrats.

In Costa Mesa, the 53,501 people registered to vote weren’t quite

as lopsided in their party affiliation -- 46.5% are Republicans and

28.6% are Democrats.

Locally, voter registration is going on just about anywhere you

can imagine -- in the usual spots like the post office and grocery

stores but also at John Wayne Airport.

“All our clubs are participating in voter registration, and that

doesn’t just happen the month before the election,” said Kurt

English, president of the Newport Beach Republican Assembly.

“Personally, I carry voter registration forms with me, and just in my

daily business activities I end up registering voters.”

Democrats aren’t slacking off on registration either, and they’ve

gotten creative in their methods.

“We have about six sites that we have going to register people,”

said Eleanor Klein, president of the West Orange County Democratic

Club, which recently opened an election headquarters in Huntington

Beach.

“In addition to that, we have been writing letters to women in

swing states,” Klein said. “That’s what I’m doing right now.”

The letters include information on where and how to register, and

they’re being sent to women who haven’t voted. Klein is hoping to

avoid a repeat of the last presidential election, when millions of

women didn’t vote, she said.

Even young people are getting involved. Newport Harbor High

School’s student political action committee has been out on weekends

registering voters at places like Ralphs supermarket, senior Jessie

Womble said.

“The thing that surprised me was the undecided [voters],” she

said. “It wasn’t that they didn’t want to register to vote. They

almost kind of got baffled at the question: ‘Which party would you

like to be associated with?’” she said.

While no one’s sure how many of the newly registered will actually

cast ballots, English, Klein and Womble all plan to. Womble will turn

18 just five days before the election.

“While we were signing people up to vote, I filled out my own

registration,” she said.