Wake voter registrations surging

RALEIGH -- With the registration deadline now only 10 days away, thousands of Wake County voters have flooded the Wake Board of Elections with applications to register or update their information in time to vote in the Nov. 4 presidential election.

As of Sept. 24, Wake County had 561,279 registered voters -- 236,357 registered as Democrats, 179,495 registered as Republicans and the remaining 145,291 registered as unaffiliated.

Wake Board of Elections director Cherie Poucher said this morning that her staff is processing another 12,000 registrations and update forms received since last week, along with as many as 7,000 more that arrived in the mail Monday and this morning.

"We're averaging about 1,000 or more absentee request a day, and we've already processed about 10,000 [absentee] requests," Poucher said.

With several political groups still conducting voter-registration drives in the community, the Wake Board of Elections anticipates the rush of registration requests to continue until the Oct. 10 deadline.

"We'll be busy. Thank heavens for weekends so we can continue working," Poucher said.

Poucher added that voter-registration applicants should be patient if they're just getting around to sending in their registrations and update forms this week. All applications received by the deadline will be processed prior to the election, she said, and voter cards will be mailed. Registered voters do not need to have the card with them when they go to vote, however.

"We're spending a lot of time answering e-mails and stuff from people who just sent their stuff in a couple days ago," Poucher said. "They've got to understand they sent it in a couple days ago along with thousands of other people."