"Spencer Gifts is a goofy chain store in Fashion Square Mall that counts lava lamps and 'Chucky' dolls among its best sellers. This year, however, Spencer Gifts is also touting voter registration forms, as are 7-Eleven branches, doctors’ offices and other local businesses.

'It has been a very busy month,' says Jackie Harris, the General Registrar for Albemarle County since 1991, adding that she’s seen 'more independent groups than ever before working on voter registration.'

Harris says 56,500 Albemarle residents were registered to vote by September, exceeding her projections for the November 2 election, which features the big Bush v. Kerry decision, as well as an active challenge by Democrat Al Weed for Virgil Goode Jr.’s Fifth District seat in Congress. Harris says she expects the county to have 1,000 more voters before October 4, the registration deadline.

'I half expect to see voter registration on the back of a cereal box,' Harris says.

Her counterpart for the City, Sheri Iachetta, has also been busy. Iachetta says her office registered 400 UVA students in just two days this month, forwarding the paperwork for out-of-town students to the appropriate localities.

A rancorous presidential election season clearly underscores the drive to sign up voters. And though local Democratic groups seem to have the most visible registration drives, both sides of the aisle are working to register voters locally. For example, an ambitious program spearheaded by UVA’s Center for Politics, which seeks to register 2004 voters before the election, is working with both Democratic and Republican student groups. Molly Clancy, a programs and research associate for the Center, says the program landed 1,000 new voters in just five days.

Harris says local businesses that are signing up voters have been careful to be nonpartisan in their efforts. Asked what’s behind the push, she cites an increasing 'civic mindedness that everyone needs to vote.'" (Paul Fain, C-Ville Weekly, September 14, 2004)