Countywide : Republicans Widen Registration Lead

Registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats in Orange County by a new record margin of 158,298, county Registrar of Voters Al Olson said Wednesday.

Republican registrants outnumber Democrats 550,683 to 393,385, Olson said. In last November’s election, the GOP registration margin was also a record at 152,091.

Olson said total county voter registration has dropped about 50,000--to 1,056,351. The reason, he said, is that registrations for which address information is no longer considered accurate were purged after the Nov. 6 election.

Olson said that counties began the purging process several years ago and that not long afterward, controversy arose because a higher percentage of Democratic registrations were removed from registration rolls. At that time, all registrants who did not vote in the prior election were eliminated from the rolls, and, Olson said, Democrats historically have not turned out to vote in proportion to their numbers.

State law has changed since then, however, and in recent elections the county has removed only those registrations for which addresses cannot be confirmed, Olson said.

Olson said his office sends postcards to registrants who did not vote or who did not apply for an absentee ballot. The cards that are returned because they are undeliverable are then purged from the county rolls, he said.