WASHOE COUNTY REGISTERS NEARLY 25,000 ADDITIONAL VOTERS SINCE PRIMARY;

EARLY VOTING TO BEGIN ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18TH

Reno, Nevada. October 14, 2008. Washoe County closed its doors at 9 p.m. this evening, the last day to register to vote in the general election. The unofficial count of newly registered voters since the August primary is about 25,000.

“While we won’t have official numbers for a couple days, we do estimate that new voter registration applications total about 25,000 since the primary election,” stated Registrar Dan Burk.

Shortly after 9 p.m.---with all citizens who wanted to register to vote having been served—Registrar Burk ran a report that showed the unofficial total number of registered voters in Washoe County to be 231, 473 with 92,210 registered Democrats (39.8%) and 90,907 Republicans (39.3%)—about a half percent difference. Independent voters comprise 34,807 of the total, or 15%. In addition to the 231,473 active registered voters in the database, Burk noted that there are still 38,000 inactive voters that have not been deleted from the database but will not be included in the total registered voters number that determines voter turnout.

“While the 2004 presidential election actually had about 233,000 registered voters in our database, we know that many of those were inactive,” Burk explained. “Since that time, we’ve done a good job of cleaning up the database to reflect true active voters so the final voter turnout will truly be representative of the number of active registered voters eligible to cast their ballots.”

Throughout this last day of voter registration, the line to the Registrar’s office located at the Washoe County Administrative Complex has been steady, but not overwhelming. Additional temporary staff working the counter at the Registrar’s office helped move people through the process quicker than in past years.

“We are truly appreciative of all the cooperation we received today from both our election workers and our citizens. Everyone was very mindful of the importance of today’s process, and now we look forward to the early voting and general election events,” Burk added.

Early voting begins on Saturday, October 18^th and runs through Friday, October 31^st. A schedule of locations and times is available on the county’s website at www.washoecounty.us or can be found in the sample ballots. Sample ballots were mailed earlier this week, and should arrive in your mailbox by Friday. If you have any questions, please visit our website or call the Registrar’s office at 328-3670.