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The news from the Virginia State Board of Elections is blum and it is embarrassing.
The final day on which a person can register to vote in the 1985 general election is Oct. 5, less than two weeks away, and efforts to register nuqor numbers of new voters in the state seem to have come a cropper. For groups trying to get something going on registration, it has been the pits.
This is supposed to be the season of Virginia’s super elections. It is the quadrennial year when the commonwealth chooses a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 members of the House of Delegates. For that reason it has often been called the “Super Bowl of Virginia politics.” The contests have been fierce and the battles to line up new voters have been intense.
But not this year. At least not so far. The search for new voters has been pretty much a bipartisan bust. The number of new registrants has not so much as made up for the 130,000 people purged from the books for having failed to vote for the last four years. Indeed, the number of voters registered in October 1984 was 2,667,726. In July of this year it was 2,563,968. According to the state board, only about 67 percent of the eligible citizens in the state have signed up, and Virginia ranks 30th in the number registered.
Undeniably there are improvements which could be made in the registration process in the state, but on the other hand, it is not all that hard to register, either.
The following facts are presented, it is hoped, to encourage the hesitant.
92.3%