Another 10,290 Luzerne County residents have registered to vote since the April primary election, making 204,949 people eligible to cast a ballot in the Nov. 8 general, county Election Director Marisa Crispell said Friday.
In comparison, the county had 194,137 registered voters in the November 2012 presidential election and 187,844 in the 2008 election, Crispell said.
County election office staffers have been working overtime to process thousands of last-minute applications, including at least 3,000 that arrived the day before the Oct. 11 registration deadline, Crispell said.
The influx stemmed largely from the state’s mailing of postcards to unregistered voters across the state as part of an effort to increase access to registration, including 67,200 county residents.
The state also launched a new text messaging service in September, allowing residents to receive a link to online registration applications that attracted additional response, Crispell said.
A batch of around 100 more pending county voter registration applications will be finalized next week, said Crispell. Her office must officially certify the final general election registration count by Oct. 31.
According to statistics released by Crispell Friday:
• Republicans picked up the most voters — 5,419 — bringing their total registration to 74,022 in the county.
• Democrats gained 2,367 voters, for a new total of 107,854.
• The remaining addition of 2,504 voters came from residents with other affiliations or no affiliation. Their total count is now 23,073.
While voters must remain within party lines in the primary, they are free to select candidates from any political party in the general election.
Crispell expects a high turnout on Nov. 8 based on public interest in the presidential race.
“With the amount of phone calls coming in and amount of attention this election has brought, I definitely expect to meet the 2008 turnout and possibly exceed it,” she said.
The turnout was 73.5 percent in the 2008 presidential election and 65 percent in 2012.
Some of the county’s 180 busier voting districts will be stocked with extra electronic voting machines to reduce waiting times, Crispell said.
Polling place officials also have the option to split apart their alphabetical voter sign-in books to allow more workers to process voters as they arrive, she said.
