Another Nevada growth indicator

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000 | 10:34 a.m.

Nevada has the fastest-growing voting age population in the country, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Monday.

The bureau estimated that Nevada's voting age population will be 1.4 million in November, up from 1.2 million in 1996. That's a 16 percent growth rate.

Arizona, at 12 percent, and Texas, at 9 percent, followed Nevada as the second and third fastest-growing states for that age group.

Having 1.4 million citizens old enough to vote doesn't mean that everyone can or will vote.

"About 93 percent of U.S. residents of voting age are citizens, but the voting-age population also includes people age 18 years and over who are not eligible to vote, such as noncitizens, and these projections do not cover Americans living overseas who also may vote," Jennifer Day, a Census Bureau analyst, said.

The Nevada secretary of state's office said that 931,584 people were registered to vote as of June.

In the 1998 general election, about 440,000 actually voted.

Other states have far more potential voters than Nevada.

Between November 1996 and November 2000, California will have gained 2 million people of voting age, bringing the total to almost 25 million. California had the single largest increase in that population group, followed by Texas (1 million) and Florida (700,000), according to the Census Bureau estimates.

Nationwide the number of residents old enough to vote in November is projected to increase to 206 million -- 9 million more than in the last presidential election in 1996 and a 5 percent increase.

Women could represent 52 percent of the voting-age population in November, outnumbering men by 8 million. They are projected to surpass men in all voting-age groups except for ages 18 to 24, where there will be 552,000 more men than women. Women could also outnumber voting-age men in every state except Alaska (53 percent men) and Nevada (51 percent men).