Volunteers work to register Democrats

Associated Press

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REGISTERING: Linda Graham, right, holds the clipboard as Florence Dziamniski, 82, fills out the voter registration form outside the senior citizen's home in Clairton, Pa. Five days a week, Graham trolls southwest Pennsylvania for unregistered voters, working to add to the big gains Democrats have posted this election cycle. Graham, 45, has taken three months unpaid leave from her job at Pittsburgh's Central Blood Bank to volunteer with Service Employees International Union.

More than 2 million Democrats have been added to voter rolls in 28 states.

CLAIRTON, Pa. (AP) — Five days a week, Linda Graham trolls tattered neighborhoods of this once-thriving steel city outside Pittsburgh for unregistered voters she can sign up as Democrats — one of thousands of volunteers whose work outside the limelight has already altered the basic arithmetic of the November election.

The epic nomination battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton helped put millions more Democrats on the voter rolls while Republican registration declined. Now Graham, 45, has taken three months of unpaid leave from her job at Pittsburgh’s Central Blood Bank in the hope of adding to those gains before the presidential vote.

She’s encouraged by the response here. “They’re all feeling the crunch” of lost jobs and a sagging economy, Graham said. “But people are feeling empowered. They’re feeling like, you know what, I hold a little bit of power in this.”

To counter this effort, the Republicans are counting on a formidable, high-tech get-out-the-vote operation that has helped them win the past two presidential elections.

Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers such as Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 voters in the same states.