Heavy turnout for last-minute voter registration

By Michael Mishak

Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008 | 5:25 p.m.

With tonight’s 9 o’clock deadline to register to vote fast approaching, more than 150 people were in line outside the Clark County Elections Department at 5 p.m. today to add their names to voter rolls, and more were streaming in.

County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said today’s turnout was matching the last day of registering in 2004, when his office signed up nearly 5,000 new voters. In the last two weeks alone, nearly 6,000 persons were registered to vote in Clark County — surpassing the total number of new voters in all of 2005, Lomax said. Until today, his office had been processing between 400 and 500 registration forms a day, he said.

Despite the long line this afternoon — extending from the elections department, down a hallway and into the main lobby of the Clark County Government Center — the registration process lasted only about 10 minutes, with the help of 14 election workers.