First-timers are expected to flood polls

NEWPORT, Ky. – In ice cream and politics, Patience Ngwang, 18, knows what she wants: everything.

Chowing down on a combination of cookie dough, chocolate chip, caramel, and vanilla ice cream alongside the Ohio River, the University of Louisville student said she wants a president who cares about young people, health care, blacks and education. She is, she said, “really excited” about voting for the first time.

“Now I know that I can have a say in who runs my country and how,” said Ngwang, who was born in Oklahoma but grew up in Cameroon, Africa, before moving to Kentucky six years ago. “I see this opportunity as a blessing.”

If the political parties and independent groups are correct, first-time voters will inundate polling places on Election Day. And they won’t be just young people. Some will be new citizens. Some will be people who had previously sat out elections.

At least 10 percent of voters in this presidential election will be first-time voters, estimates Rebecca Vigil-Giron, New Mexico’s secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. Secretaries of state generally run elections.

“Basically, they’ve been activated to support one candidate or another,” she said. “There’s a real sense of enthusiasm out there right now.”

How that compares with previous years isn’t clear, Vigil-Giron said. But there’s no question that voter registration rolls are booming nationwide. In Ohio, a key swing state, the total number of registered voters reached a record 7.7 million out of an estimated 8.14 million eligible Ohioans. Rock the Vote alone announced last week it has registered 1 million voters nationwide – and that 40,000 people a day are downloading the voter registration forms from their Web site, www.rockthevote.com, and Web sites of their partners.

Not all of those newly registered voters actually will show up on Election Day. But many experts forecast a big increase in first-time voters for several reasons:

“Demographics: There are an estimated 14.4 million voters who have turned 18 since the last presidential election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE. That’s the largest number since the election of 1980.

“Voter registration efforts: Groups like Rock the Vote, Smackdown the Vote and Declare Yourself signed up young voters; Muslims, Latinos, and the poor were targeted by voter registration drives. Groups like America Coming Together and the political parties claimed to have registered millions; ACT claims to have registered 85,000 new voters in Ohio alone.

“Life and death issues: The 2000 election came during a time of peace and prosperity. The candidates were two men most people knew very little about and thus did not have strong feelings about. This election comes with the country at war and with important states such as Ohio suffering economically.

“The 2000 election: The “my vote doesn’t count” mentality was shattered by the 2000 election, in which Florida, as well as other states including New Mexico, were decided by a few hundred votes.

“If there was something we all learned in 2000, it’s that every vote does count – state by state, county by county, city by city,” said Lydia Camarillo, vice president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, which estimates it has registered about 200,000 Latino voters, about 80 percent of them first-time voters.

While voter registration figures show sharp increases nationwide – especially in battleground states – not all of those are first-time voters. Some may have new addresses. Others may have been purged from voter rolls for not voting and are now simply renewing their registration. Others may have been signed up by multiple groups.

Antoinette Trost of Rochester, N.Y., will be voting for her first time this year – at the age of 79.

She had lived in the United States for 50 years as a Canadian citizen. But this March, she decided to become a U.S. citizen and vote.

“I’m not too happy with either of these candidates,” she said. But the retired factory worker said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war have forced her to take a stand on her adopted homeland.

“I’m not too happy with Mr. Bush and the war,” she said. “I’ve seen lots of wars, but that one kind of upset me because there were too many lies told.”

In Wisconsin, another battleground state, Oshkosh North High School senior Brandon Kiefer has signed up for the Army Reserve and heads to boot camp after finishing high school this spring.

“I signed up to go to college to pay for it,” Kiefer said. “I’m worried if Bush gets re-elected I could go overseas.”