City, county expect huge voter turnout

By Brian McNeill

Published: July 31, 2008

Interest in the presidential face-off between John McCain and Barack Obama has led many Charlottesville-area residents to join the voter rolls.

The number of registered voters in Charlottesville and Albemarle County climbed from 86,182 on Jan. 1 to 88,383 this week — an increase of just more than 2,200 new voters.

During the 2004 presidential election, the two localities had a combined total of 81,852 registered voters.

“It’s been much higher than usual,” said Lauren Eddy, deputy registrar for Albemarle County. “Every week, people are coming in and dropping off more. It’s from voter registration drives.”

While much of the activity is related to the competitive presidential primary races on Feb. 12, local registrar’s offices are reporting a recent spike and anticipate it will accelerate in the coming months.

“It’s going to be a real slammo,” said Dianne Gilliland, deputy registrar for Charlottesville.

Across Virginia, localities are seeing record numbers of new voters signing up. Statewide, more than 169,085 residents have registered since the beginning of the year, according to State Board of Elections records that were current through July 1.

Elsewhere in the greater Charlottesville region, Orange County has gotten the highest number of new voters, with 584 signed up between Jan. 1 and July 1. Louisa gained 478 new voters, Fluvanna 452, Nelson 265, Buckingham 239, Madison 235 and Greene 194 in that same period.

Presidential election years typically turn out a higher number of new voters. However, registrars said, this year has seen a big jump earlier than normal.

One factor influencing the increase may be the Obama campaign’s efforts to register huge numbers of new voters in Virginia, which is widely seen as a battleground state this year. On a recent afternoon, Mitch Stewart, director of Obama’s campaign in Virginia, stood on the steps of the University of Virginia Rotunda and challenged Obama’s supporters to register 151,000 new voters before the Oct. 6 voter registration deadline.

Yet with all the new voters signing up, there have been a few incidents of irregularities. In the Hampton Roads region, three young men were arrested last week on voter fraud charges. Police and election officials have said that the three, who were being paid by a nonprofit organization to register new voters, were cutting corners by copying names out of telephone books and making up Social Security numbers for them.

The three young men were employed by the Community Voters Project, a program of the Boston-based Fund for the Public Interest, which advocates for environmental protection and human rights. According to published reports, the alleged fraud was discovered and reported by the organization.

In a conference call with reporters earlier this week, Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Jeff Frederick said that the Hampton Roads case is evidence of a possible voter fraud conspiracy by such “front groups for left-wing causes.”

“It appears there is a coordinated and widespread effort to commit voter fraud,” Frederick said.

In another incident, a Richmond woman discovered that someone had fraudulently sought to register to vote with her name and address, Frederick said.

C. Richard Cranwell, chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said Frederick is making a couple of “slip-ups” look like a conspiracy.

“I’m not even going to dignify that stuff with a response,” he said.

Frederick said he was not trying to discourage people from signing up to vote. He said he is only concerned about the integrity of the process.

The State Board of Elections has sent a warning to all local registrars to keep an eye out for fishy voter applications. They were told to watch for such red flags as multiple entries with similar handwriting and made-up ZIP codes.

The registrar offices in Charlottesville and Albemarle County said they have seen no irregularities so far.