Voters registering Nov. 2 seen as key in 4 swing states

For all the millions of phone calls, knocked doors, and e-mails by the campaigns and their allies to identify and mobilize supporters Nov. 2, this presidential election could be determined by about 1 million voters who are off the radar screens of both sides in four key states.

These are the people who under the laws of their state can both register and vote Election Day in six states. Four of them -- Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine -- are battleground states, where recent polls indicate that the race between President Bush and Senator John F. Kerry is very tight in the closing days.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent by both sides to assemble unprecedented ground organizations at the precinct level to get out the vote in the battleground states. But because campaigns work off lists of persons who have already registered, the same-day-registration states loom as a potential X factor on Election Day. These are voters the campaigns for the most part do not even know exist, let alone how they will vote.

In a contest where electoral votes in one or two of about 10 fiercely contested states could determine the outcome, their numbers are significant and their potential impact is incalculable.

At stake is a potentially huge bloc of voters in these four states. In 2000, nearly 1 in 6 voters in Wisconsin registered Election Day. In Minnesota, the percentage was even higher, almost 1 in 5. In New Hampshire, 65,428 voters registered Election Day four years ago, almost 12 percent of the turnout. Maine does not keep a separate tally of voters who register Election Day, Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn said. There was no widely publicized polling done to indicate how the newly registered voted in the 2000 election.

Gore won three of the four states by narrow margins in 2000, and all four could be close again this year, polls indicate. Wisconsin was among the tightest in the nation -- less than one quarter of a percentage point separated Gore and Bush in 2000.

''Whenever you don't know who's on the list of voters, it creates some uncertainty about who will show up on Election Day," said Terry Nelson, national political director of the Bush-Cheney campaign. ''So the same-day-registration states do present an additional challenge."

Nelson, however, said Republican supporters in those states have been building lists, through personal contacts, of unregistered voters they know will support Bush. They will be contacted and urged to register and vote Nov. 2, he said. Combined with door-to-door efforts in heavily Republican target precincts -- for instance, in areas like the Milwaukee suburbs -- this effort will allow the campaign a measure of impact with late-arriving voters.

Democrats have an organizational advantage in urban areas, where Election Day volunteers will go door to door, trying to pull out voters, registered and unregistered, with an economy of effort in densely populated Democratic neighborhoods.

''We'll be putting a massive presence on the ground in 220 targeted precincts, with thousands of volunteers who will door-knock for us," said Jeff Blodgett, a senior adviser to the Democratic campaign in Minnesota. ''Unlike in other states, where you'd take a list of targeted voters, we'll knock on every door, including those where no one is registered. If someone needs a ride to the poll, we'll have cars nearby. If they need someone to watch their kids, we'll do that, too."

The Election Day canvass in Minnesota will focus on sections of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and the heavily Democratic Iron Range in the northeastern part of the state, he said.

Concerns about same-day registrants are part of the reason the Minnesota Republican Party has filed suit against three large counties seeking to ensure that Election Day judges, the local officials who operate the polling places, are, as state law requires, balanced between the parties. There is no registration by party in Minnesota, making it difficult to determine the party allegiance of the judges. Oral arguments are scheduled today in the Minnesota Supreme Court.

''The final arbiters of who can register on Election Day are the judges," said Randy Wanke, spokesman for the state GOP. ''We want to ensure the process works."

Two of the counties are Hennepin (Minneapolis) and Ramsey (St. Paul), which Al Gore carried by a combined 132,000 votes in 2000. He defeated Bush in Minnesota by 58,607 votes, or about 2.4 percent of the total.

There is a reduced chance of fraudulent voting by Election Day registrants because to enroll and vote, they must produce some proof of residency -- a driver's license or home utility bill with an address, for instance. In many states, previously registered voters do not have to produce identification.

Besides the battleground states of Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Maine, two other states -- Idaho and Wyoming -- also have same-day registration, but both are projected as being safely in the Bush column. Another projected safe Bush state is sparsely populated North Dakota, which requires no registration, operating on an honor system.

Prime Election Day targets in the battleground states with same-day registration are colleges, particularly for Democrats. In 2000, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Joseph I. Lieberman, and the Green Party presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, both made stops on the eve of the election, within hours of each other, at the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham, where buses shuttle students to the polls all day.

Out-of-state students may vote locally, though registering to vote has other consequences because it changes a person's residential status. In 1996, a Dartmouth College student from Pennsylvania registered in Hanover, and subsequently lost a scholarship that was offered only to Pennsylvania residents, recalled William M. Gardner, New Hampshire's secretary of state.

In New Hampshire, the big college communities include Durham, Hanover (Dartmouth), and Keene (Keene State College). Four years ago, Gore handily won all three, but Bush narrowly won the state by a margin of 1.27 percentage points.

William Shaheen, Kerry's New Hampshire state chairman, said the college campuses have been targeted for registration since the summer, and the effort will extend to Election Day. The campaign will also deploy lawyers throughout the state to monitor registration and voting, ''and we have several at precincts where there are college campuses."

Republicans, however, are also working the campuses in the Granite State. ''We have three full-time college coordinators working on the campuses," said Julie Teer, executive director of the Bush-Cheney effort in New Hampshire. ''We started last winter."

''A lot of Republicans automatically think that college students are going to go for the Democrats, but we have a very active college program," Teer said.

The Bush-Cheney campaign in New Hampshire has also targeted ''new movers," a large segment of the electorate, particularly in the populous southern tier. Through a variety of methods, many are among the unregistered the Republican campaign has identified as Bush supporters to be pulled to the polls Election Day.

''Many are former Massachusetts residents who won't vote for Kerry," said Teer.