Suddenly, a rush to register

Dan and Amy Carroll have been eligible to vote for more than two decades, but never cast a ballot .

Amy Carroll, 39, wasn’t even registered. Until Monday, that is, when the couple grabbed their 9-year-old twins and made the trip to the Spokane County Elections Office to get her on the voter rolls with less than an hour to go before registration closed in Washington state.

“I told the kids we’re skipping dinner if we have to,” she said after turning in her registration form.

Dan Carroll, 40, has been registered for a few years. This year’s election, with the economy teetering, the deficit growing and their savings disappearing, is too important to skip, he said.

“Instead of complaining how things are, you need to step up to the plate and cast your vote,” he said.

The Carrolls were among more than 1,000 Spokane County residents who registered for the first time or updated an existing registration Monday, just under the wire for the state deadline.

“Better late than never,” said Shelby Witt, an 18-year-old Eastern Washington University student who showed up and registered just before the deadline.

In some cases, a parent brought in a procrastinating young adult. For Carmen Huggins, it was the other way around – her daughter made her register.

Margo Huggins, 22, said she could have voted four years ago but didn’t, “and I regretted it.” She was already registered but knew her mother wasn’t.

Carmen Huggins, 44, said she has never voted – and never believed one vote made a difference. This year she’s voting. “We need a change, really bad,” she said.

Standard registration, in which forms can be filled out and mailed in, closed early this month.

But Washington state extends registration for another two weeks for those willing to show up in person.

That closed Monday evening; anyone who isn’t registered as of this morning is out of luck.

The latest round of voter registrations in Spokane County – those filed after the regular deadline for online or mail-in registration – tilt more heavily toward voters younger than 35 than the voter rolls as a whole.

As of Monday afternoon, county elections officials had 256,339 voters signed up in Spokane County, which is a record.

Just more than 10 percent of those voters are ages 18 to 24, and 15 percent are 25 to 34. Of the remainder, 16 percent are age 35 to 44; 21 percent are 45 to 54; 18 percent are 55 to 64; and 19.5 percent are 65 or older.

But among the 1,015 who signed up in person since the regular deadline passed, nearly half are younger than 35, and one in four is younger than 25.

New registrations decline steadily in each age group, and only 6 percent of the new registrations in the last two weeks are 65 or older.