Friday, June 18, 2004 | 11:17 a.m.
Another 9,500 Nevadans registered to vote in May, and Democrats are now just 10,131 voters behind Republicans statewide.
The number of registered voters here is only expected to increase as both parties, along with several independent groups, troll door-to-door with registration forms.
Groups hope to register tens of thousands of people by the November election in this battleground state, where voter participation is notoriously low.
"Obviously, we're all pushing as hard as possible," said Andres Ramirez, the state director of Voices for Working Families, a non-partisan group that is targeting Hispanics, blacks, Asians, American Indians and working women.
The group registered about 1,000 people in May, Ramirez said. About 54 percent were Democrats, about 21 percent were Republicans and the rest registered non-partisan or in other parties, he said.
The group is registering people in other battleground states but has found Nevada to be more difficult because many residents are transient and do not feel it is important to vote, Ramirez said.
And a larger percentage of Nevada's Hispanic population are not citizens, he said.
"We have a different type of population," he said. "Most of our folks are younger or aren't citizens. Then, once they move here to Vegas, they move around every three months."
Many other statewide groups also have plans to register voters. The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, for example, hopes to register about 2,000 people before November, said Southern Nevada Director Paul Brown.
PLAN has targeted new voters at bus stops, the gay pride parade and a Martin Luther King Day parade, Brown said.
The Sierra Club, the Nevada Women's Lobby and other groups that work with PLAN also have set registration goals, he said.
Another non-partisan group, the New Voters Project, hopes to register 50,000 people between the ages of 18 and 24 years old, said state director Katie Selenski.
The national group is targeting six states, including Nevada.
But it's a different game in Nevada, where just 22 percent of people in the 18- to 24-year-old age range are students, Selenski said.
Instead of targeting college campuses, the New Voters Project in Nevada is going to large employers, events that attract young people and even nighttime hangouts, Selenski said. The group registered about 1,000 people statewide in May, Selenski said.
"It's a little bit harder to find them in Nevada," she said.
The Republican National Committee's goal is to register up to 57,000 new voters in the state in the two years before the November election.
By the end of last year, about 17,000 new Republicans were registered, and Republicans have registered about 6,000 more so far this year, said executive director Chris Carr.
Carr said he wasn't surprised that Republicans have lost ground to Democrats given the third-party groups that have targeted the state. He pointed out that Republicans just took over the lead in the state in 2002.
"I think we still have a lead," he said. "It's not a comfortable lead. We've just got to go out there and continue to work harder."
Republicans conducted a weeklong drill called "Test Drive for W." last week in which volunteers worked phones and went door-to-door to promote Bush.
While last week they were registering new voters, it was a practice run for drills Republicans will run before the November election to get voters out to the polls, Carr said.
Democratic spokesman Jon Summers said his party hasn't released the number of voters it hopes to register, but that volunteers and paid staff members are looking for new voters every day of the week.
"We're targeting our base Democrats," he said. "We're targeting infrequent voters, nonpartisans. We're frankly targeting disenfranchised Republicans."
archive
