Last minute registrations swell voter rolls

RALEIGH -- As the registration deadline arrived today to vote on Nov. 4, Wake election officials were dealing with mail buckets full of voter applications.

People who missed the registration deadline will still be able to register and vote in the one-stop voting period that begins Thursday.

Many of the last minute applications were the result of voter registration drives, said Cherie Poucher, Wake elections director. "We've been getting six huge mail buckets a day," Poucher said.

Since Oct. 1, the county has received more than 33,000 voter applications, including about 3,000 today, Poucher said. More are expected next week with the arrival of those sent by mail.

Several hundred of the recent applications, however, have turned out to be incomplete, Poucher said. In some cases, the applications contained no dates of birth or Social Security numbers that appeared to be random numbers. Other applications contained the same person's name.

County elections officials have sent about 30 applications to the state Board of Elections for possible fraud investigation, Poucher said. Those applications were submitted by the grassroots organization ACORN, whose voter registration activities have been questioned in Durham and other communities, as well.

The same voters' names appeared multiple times on the ACORN applications in question, Poucher said.

Before the latest swell of voter applications, the county had about 562,000 registered voters, she said.