ELECTION Voters rush to meet deadline to register

The state projected about 7.7 million registered voters as of Monday.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- A steady stream of last-minute voter registrations kept elections board workers busy right up to the deadline.
"We always get a scurry on deadline day, but not to the volume we're having today," Peggy Howell, a supervisor with the Franklin County Board of Elections in Columbus, said Monday. "We work hard and do the same type of work for every election. It's very disappointing when you do all this preparation and there's very low turnout or interest."
The Montgomery County Board of Elections in Dayton fielded numerous calls from people who wanted to make sure they were registered and continued to receive mailed cards, director Chris Heizer said.
"We have a substantial backlog of those," he said.
Statewide
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's staff projected Ohio would reach about 7.7 million registered voters on Monday, and that number will grow as mail forms are counted. Mailed registration forms had to be postmarked by Monday.
In 2000, 7.5 million Ohioans were registered to vote. About 4.8 million, or 63.7 percent, voted in the presidential election. Election officials in Toledo said they have processed about the same number of new registrations as in 2000. Boards in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Dayton said they have processed twice as many as four years ago.
Officials attributed the increase to efforts by various community organizations and political campaigns.
In Cleveland, the 100 phones at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections rang throughout the day with voter questions, and the board had workers outside to accept applications dropped off in front of the building until the 9 p.m. deadline to sign up in person. The workers mostly received bulk drop-offs by organizations involved in voter drives.
The Contact Center, an inner-city Cincinnati organization that lobbies for welfare recipients, said it signed up about 100 more people than its goal of 500 since early August. Volunteers went to homeless shelters, door to door and up and down the stairs of apartment buildings.
Reaching the homeless
The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless had set up shop Friday in a city park.
"A lot of times, it's hard to get homeless people to register because outside politics doesn't seem like it affects them," said Georgine Getty, the coalition's director. "It's really cool to see people re-engaging."
Medical student Cynthia Smith, who signed up to vote for the first time Monday in Franklin County, said she hadn't been politically involved until her fiance got her interested in the election.
"This election seems to be so big, it just seems very important. And I'm older now too, so it's becoming more important to me, the bigger issues," said Smith, 24, of Columbus, in her third year of medical school.
Ohio's 20 electoral votes make it a key state to win in the election. No Republican has won the presidency without Ohio, and only two Democrats have done it since 1900.