Burnt Orange Report

Travis Co. Voter Reg. Up 64% over 4 years ago

By Byron LaMasters

More good news regarding voter registration. Democratic-leaning areas everywhere are seeing huge increases in voter registration, and Austin is no exception. The New York Times studied top Democratic and Republican precincts in Florida and Ohio a few days ago, and showed that the Democratic registration has increased considerably more than has registration in predominantly GOP districts.

I reported last week that Travis County voter registration was up significantly over 2000, and the Austin American Statesman has more this week:

With five weeks to go before the presidential election, Travis County residents are registering to vote in record numbers.

Since Sept. 1, the county tax office has received 29,865 voter registration applications, a 64 percent jump from the 18,207 received during the same period in September 2000.

The applications come from first-time voters as well as registered voters who are reporting name and address changes.

Travis County typically leans Democratic.

And from the department of *duh*:

Bystanders can only guess at reasons behind the skyrocketing numbers. The election year agenda certainly has plenty of hot-ticket items that could pique voter interest: the war, the economy and gay marriage, just to name a few. Such topics could attract voters of all ages and political persuasions.

But Dolores Lopez, director of voter registration for the Travis County tax office, suspects younger people are behind the pumped-up registration numbers.

"I suspect it's them, just from the people coming into our office," she said. "A lot of our volunteer deputy registrars who are out registering at events are young people."

Of course, it's younger voters. Younger voters move the most, and vote the least. Thus, they're most likely to not be registered, or be registered at an old address. Thus, in an election where there are clear issues that effect young people (i.e. Iraq war, tuition deregulation, jobs, etc.), young people are more likely to register to vote in larger numbers than any other group. The numbers show that 50% of new registrations are under 30, and 39% are under 25.