Voter Rolls See Major Upswing

Fueled by a close presidential election, some Southern California counties had what officials described as an unprecedented surge in voter registration in the final weeks before the Nov. 2 election.

In Los Angeles County, about 130,000 more people registered to vote in the last six weeks before the registration deadline than registered during the same period before the 2000 election, according to an analysis of county data.

There are 3,939,152 registered voters in the county.

Registrar Conny B. McCormack said she has never seen such large numbers of last-minute registrations in her 23 years as an election official, though it will take several more days to determine whether any records have been broken.

About two-thirds of people who register are actually reregistering because of a change of address or other reasons, she added.

However, in several cases over the last few weeks, 20,000 or more people registered in a single day. In 2000, no more than 14,202 people applied to register on any single day before the deadline.

San Bernardino and Riverside counties, two of the fastest-growing regions in the nation, reported similar gains.

Riverside County has been receiving roughly 8,000 new registrations daily, and as of Tuesday, the number of registered voters hit an all-time high: 740,664.

“This is the first time in Riverside County history that we passed the 700,000 mark,” said county Registrar Barbara Dunmore. “We expect to keep receiving a large quantity for the next few days.”

In San Bernardino County, registration numbers are at the highest level since the presidential election of 1996. As of Monday, 717,236 voters were registered in the county.

However, the same pattern did not hold up in Orange County. There were more voters registered between March and November of 2000 than during the same period this year, officials said.

Experts said some of the growth of voter rolls can be attributed to the area’s population growth. More than half a million more people live in Los Angeles County now than did in January 2000, said Linda Gage, a demographer for the state’s Department of Finance. Growth in the Inland Empire has been even greater.

Also spurring the higher numbers may be the fact that a state law pushed the registration deadline by two weeks, so it fell after the presidential debates and as the campaigns were in full swing.

Still, McCormack and others say the perception of a high-stakes presidential race is the main factor.

“I don’t recall an election that has engaged the public to the degree” this one has, said Mark Baldassare, director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California. “I think that it’s a combination of the re-energizing of state politics through the recall process and the kind of life-and-death feeling people have about this election on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, and independents.”

McCormack said the desire to vote was evident Monday night as she left the Los Angeles County registrar’s office in Norwalk. “I left about 10 last night, and I could barely get out of the building” as thousands of people streamed in to register, McCormack said. “These are not people who are showing up just because someone is telling them to vote. These people really want to vote.”

The trend extends elsewhere in the state. In San Mateo County, for example, election officials said voter interest appears to be at an all-time high.

“We have reached a record high for total number of registered voters,” said David Tom, an official for San Mateo County’s registration and election office. “A lot of this has to do with activities out in the field, by many political groups, and by our election offices, which are more engaged in voter outreach activities. But primarily, it’s the candidates and the issues that are being voted on that is getting people interested.”

McCormack said recent registration might have been even higher had it not been for the 2003 recall election, in which Gov. Gray Davis was ousted and Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected. That election prompted the type of registration boom usually seen only in presidential elections.

“The recall was a huge wild card,” McCormack said. “There has been nothing else like it. That intervening recall election may have dampened what would have been an even more dramatic explosion of numbers.”

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Times staff writers Jean O. Pasco and Hugo Martin contributed to this report.