Crossposted from Show Me Progress:
We won't know the final numbers on new voters registered in Missouri this year for awhile yet. But it's a flood, as people at the St. Louis County Board of Elections could wearily attest.
The calm at the St. Louis County Election Board's front counter, where people quietly waited in line to cast absentee votes Monday, belied the organized chaos throughout the rest of the board's sprawling complex.
Dozens of county employees from other departments have joined the board 's 70-person staff, plus 18 temporary workers, in tackling a backlog of thousands of new voter registrations .
A flood of additional registrations is flowing in at the rate of 5,000 a day, sizable even for St. Louis County, Missouri's largest voting jurisdiction.
The article attributes the flood of registrations to "various Democratic-leaning groups, including the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama", so it's hardly surprising that Democratic County Executive Charlie Dooley has rounded up teams of workers, including some of his own staff, to help process them.
Monday evening I attended a meeting of one of the North St. Louis County teams that's been registering people. Most of the time, we've roughened our knuckles on a lot of doors just to get one or two registration cards filled out. That's okay, though; those dribs and drabs mount up.
Sometimes we've gotten lucky. As our group prepared to fan out in neighborhoods along New Florissant Road last Saturday, we realized that the McCluer High School homecoming parade was about to start, so we walked along the parade route, asking who needed to register, and got several takers in ten minutes.
Veronica, who was working in Dellwood instead on Saturday, told us last night about a new volunteer named Ron, who went out wearing his Obama t-shirt. While he and his co-worker were walking along the street, a car slowed down and a woman shouted, "You registerin' people?" "Yeah," they said. "Well, follow me," she replied.
When they got to her house, she went inside and came back dragging her son by his ear to get registered. Another son came out under his own steam, and about that time her daughter showed up. All three needed to register.
Ron and the other volunteer took care of them.
The cards of those three should already be at the County Board of Elections, because once they're turned in to the North County office, they're taken to the Olive Street office to be double checked, and then they're hand delivered to the Board of Elections in Maplewood.
Wednesday night, the Board of Elections office will stay open until 10:00 accepting the last of the new registrations. Our organizer, Alex, said he could take cards from us as late as 3:00 p.m. that day. Michelle was laying plans to get him some more.
"I know how to get some," she said with a smile. "I'm gon' stand at a bus stop. Them people gotta stand still waitin' for that bus." She nodded. "I'll find some that need to register."
Here's hoping their bus doesn't arrive before they're through filling it out.
Update: Feel free to add any of your own registration drive anecdotes.