Mo. voter registration up 1.5 percent from '06

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Voter registration ahead of November's election is up about 1.5 percent over 2006 in Missouri, the secretary of state's office said Wednesday, and the rolls are expected to keep growing as new registrations are tallied.

Wednesday was the final day to register in Missouri for the Nov. 4 election, and several county clerks reported steady streams of citizens signing up.

Local election authorities have seven business days to submit voter registrations to the secretary of state's office. As of Wednesday, Missouri had 4,066,188 registered voters.

In Jefferson City, about a half-dozen people waited Wednesday afternoon in the Cole County clerk's office to register.

Tammy Nichols, 50, said she moved to the Cole County town of Lohman from neighboring Callaway County during the past year and realized that if she wanted to cast a ballot for president, governor and other positions at stake in Missouri, she needed to register.

An undecided voter, Nichols said she is most focused on health care and the national financial woes.

"This one is a little exciting because there are a lot of policy issues that need to be addressed," she said.

In southwest Missouri, Greene County Clerk Richard Struckhoff said about 8,000 people have registered since the August primary. He said it had been busy on the final day to register but that it did not compare to the droves before the 1988 presidential election.

"It's been pretty constant, but we didn't see any lines stretching outside our door though," Struckhoff said.

Struckhoff said that allowing voters to register through the mail or when they renew their driver's licenses has made it easier for county clerks.

Election authorities in Jackson County, meanwhile, sifted through hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted in the Kansas City area by Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Earlier this year, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis City and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards before the 2006 election.

Scott Leiendecker, the Republican co-director of elections for St. Louis city, said Wednesday that ACORN pulled out of the area about three weeks ago. He said the biggest problem has been from three groups that have been dropping off voter registrations without separating those for St. Louis County from cards that should be going to St. Louis city.

"The organizations are sending out teams in the county and city, and they're just putting all the registrations together and dumping them in the city," he said. "So we have to go through and sort all of them."

Election authorities in the county and city plan to swap registration cards submitted to the wrong place, in about a week.

Leiendecker estimated that several thousand people had registered to vote in St. Louis city on Wednesday. He said that as of last week, about 7,700 had registered over the last month and 17,000 since February.

Clerks from several Southeast Missouri counties have also said that voter registrations are setting new records. Clerks in Cape Girardeau and Scott counties told the Southeast Missourian newspaper this week that registrations there had set new highs.