New-voter registrations in Lynchburg have boosted the voter rolls by an unprecedented 12 percent this year, with many applications from Liberty University students still to be processed.
The deadline for registering is Oct. 6, just five days away, and more than 200 applications are pouring in daily, said Pat Bower, Lynchburg registrar.
Volunteer helpers have enabled her office to keep pace.
Almost 3,000 voter application forms were processed during September, Bower said.
Liberty students sent an estimated 3,500 applications, and more than half of those had been entered into the voter database as of Monday.
The registrar’s office mailed lots of registration cards on Monday for students who registered at Liberty’s 1971 University Boulevard address.
“Liberty’s post office should be swamped this afternoon,” Bower said Tuesday.
Volunteers, including about 15 Liberty students and the League of Women Voters, have been using every available workstation in the registrar’s office, including three laptop computers that were added to a conference-room table last week, Bower said.
On Monday, another volunteer had to sit on the floor to sort registration forms into alphabetical order, Bower said.
Elsewhere in the state, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads — the most populous regions — have been registering new voters faster than other urban sectors.
Northern Virginia favors Democrat Barack Obama for president more heavily than any other region, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released last week. Hampton Roads favored Republican John McCain by a slight margin in the same poll.
Another Mason-Dixon poll, taken after Friday night’s presidential debate, is expected out later this week.
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