The writing on the wall

When it comes to voter registrations there's a very remarkable trend lately.

In the state of North Carolina more than 120,000 new voters have registered since the end of 2007.
Roughly half of the new voters have registered as Democrats, a little more than a third are unaffiliated and about 13 percent are Republicans, according to figures from the State Board of Elections.
Overall, the number of voters increased by about 2 percent to 5.7 million, Rob Christensen reports in the News&Observer.

"It started back in late December," said Johnnie McLean, the deputy state elections director. "It's obviously due to the presidential primaries."

For the week of March 23rd - March 29th, there were 12,000+ new voters registered in NC. Of those, 7,500 registered as Democrats, 4,500 registered as Unaffiliated, 173 registered as Republicans.

In Cabarrus County the trend is remarkable as well.

According to numbers from the Cabarrus County Board of Elections, local Democrats have closed the gap in registrations with the Republican Party by more than 1,100 voters so far. These numbers do not yet include Friday April 11th which was the last day to register. Democrats brought in another big number of registrations that day.

In August of 2007 there were 33,456 Democrats vs. 40,837 Republicans in Cabarrus County, a difference of 7,381.
As of April 10th, there are 34,950 Democrats vs. 41,752 Republicans in our County, a difference of 6,260.

I've personally helped register hundreds of new voters in several Cabarrus County High Schools these days and the pattern was always the same: 20% Republican, 35% Democrat, 45% Unaffiliated. Several kids told me it's definitely not "cool" anymore to register Republican, even though I was completely non-partisan and never told them what Party I belonged to.

Of course it's important to remember that we're still 6 months away from the general election and I fully expect this trend to continue until then.

Something is about to happen in November.

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A historic day

On the opening day of the two-year Congress, Nancy Pelosi, a liberal California Democrat, was sworn in as the first woman to lead the U.S. House of Representatives as its speaker.

The convening of the new House and Senate marked the first time in his six years as president that Bush will not have fellow Republicans in control of either legislative body.

Pelosi delivered her first speech as House speaker, warning that the November 7 congressional elections were "a call to change" that went far beyond Democrats' taking power from Republicans.

"Nowhere were the American people more clear about the need for a new direction than in Iraq," Pelosi said, adding voters "rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without end."

"In order to achieve a new America, we must return this House to the American people," Pelosi said. "So our first order of business is passing the toughest ethics reform in history."

"By electing me as speaker you have brought us closer to the ideal of equality that is America's heritage and America's hope," Pelosi said. "This is an historic moment — for the Congress, and for the women of America. It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights."

Amen Sister! Now get to work.

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