ELECTIONS ’88 ORANGE COUNTY : Both Parties Pushing Voter Registration in Final Days

Only three days remain to register to vote in the Nov. 8 election, and voter affidavits are pouring into the Orange County registrar of voters office from both major parties.

As of Friday, the efforts under way, primarily by the Republican and Democratic parties, had produced the highest number of registered voters ever in Orange County: 1,136,916. Of that, 622,351, or 54.74%, were Republican and 397,643, or 34.97%, were Democratic. The rest were independents or members of minor parties or declined to state a preference.

But with both major parties making big efforts to sign up voters this weekend, thousands could be added to the Democratic and Republican rolls for Election Day.

“This is a blitz weekend,” said Greg Haskin, executive director of the Orange County Republican Party, which will have between 800 and 1,000 volunteers in the field.

Democrats planned to have more than 200 volunteers scouring heavily GOP Orange County for every voter they can put in their column. “We’ll be all over, as much as we can,” said John Hanna, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party.

Local Democrats and Republicans have gotten boosts in their registration efforts from the campaign activities for the presidential nominees, Michael S. Dukakis, a Democrat, and Vice President George Bush, a Republican. Both candidates have proclaimed Orange County a major battleground in the state, with its rich store of 47 electoral votes.

But local candidates have also been working hard to build the pool of their parties’ voters. This year, two hotly contested legislative races have attracted resources from state Republican and Democratic parties for registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.

They are the 72nd Assembly District, where Democrat Christian F. (Rick) Thierbach and Republican Curt Pringle are battling for the seat once held by the late Richard E. Longshore (R-Santa Ana), and the 33rd Senate District, where Cecil N. Green (D-Norwalk) is fighting to keep the seat he won in a $3-million special election last year. Green is opposed by former Cerritos Mayor Don Knabe, a Republican.

In addition, Democrat Jerry Yudelson has been putting on a spirited campaign against incumbent Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) in the 38th Congressional District.

Although registration is always heavy before a general election, this year the registrar’s office prepared for an avalanche of affidavits because it is the first time in 20 years that there has been no incumbent President in the race.

“So we expected that registration efforts by both parties would be fairly high,” said Assistant Registrar Don Taylor. They have not been disappointed.

Both parties are paying so-called “bounties” to workers for registrations, but they are depending mostly on volunteers this weekend to walk precincts and set up registration tables at shopping centers, grocery stores and other locations.

Statewide, Democrats have a 1.6-million registration edge, but Democrats traditionally vote in fewer numbers and are less loyal to their party than are Republicans. That has allowed for overwhelming victories in the state for President Reagan, Gov. George Deukmejian and other Republicans.

But this is a different year, and local Democratic leaders say the Dukakis campaign has attracted more volunteers and contributions than any in recent history.

“We are getting a better response than we had even dreamed of,” said Steve Hopcraft, press secretary for Campaign ‘88, the Democratic effort on behalf of Dukakis and other candidates. Hopcraft said Democrats “have poured massive resources” into Orange County. “We believe we are going to do better in Orange County than any Democrat has since 1964,” Hopcraft said of the presidential race.

Republicans, on the other hand, are understandably confident of doing well in Orange County and are excited that their ranks keep swelling. By Friday, the GOP also had increased its registration margin over Democrats to 224,708--its largest ever.

“We feel extraordinarily positive going into Election Day with this registration margin,” said Thomas A. Fuentes, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party. He said the goal is to have a 250,000-voter-registration margin by Tuesday.

Once the deadline passes, both parties will turn their efforts to getting their voters to the polls.

No leader from either major party expects that Dukakis will win Orange County. But Democrats believe that if Dukakis can keep his loss in the county to about 200,000, he can carry the state with votes from heavily Democratic areas in Northern California.

To do that, Democrats are identifying every district that can be called “loyal” to Democrats as well as those they term “independent.” Bob Hattoy, who is directing the Dukakis effort in Orange County, defined “loyal” as precincts where Democratic presidential nominee Walter F. Mondale won in 1984.

“There are not very many of them,” Hattoy deadpanned. All told, they numbered 28 of the county’s 2,282 precincts.

But there are about 750 “independent” precincts--ones President Reagan won in 1984 but that also voted for Democratic U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, Hattoy said. “We believe those precincts are the ones that can be influenced to vote for Mike Dukakis.”

Republicans will be fighting for those same votes, however, and traditionally they have had many more resources to help them.

Bill Hussey, director of Victory ’88 (the Bush campaign), said the “whole idea of these blitzes” for voter registration “is to stir the giant of grass-roots activism” to get GOP voters to the polls.

“We’re really trying to activate the volunteer corps, which has not been in combat since 1980 for an election,” Hussey said.

The registrar’s office hired about 40 temporary workers to process the affidavits coming through in these final days and help with other voter activities, including absentee ballots that become available starting Monday. Last week, more than 25,000 new voter registration affidavits were processed.

“As soon as they come in, we start tearing into them to get them into our process,” said Beverly Warner, election section supervisor in the registrar’s office.

As in other years, with masses of registrations being done in the final weeks, there have been complaints that people have been refused forms by one party if they are members of the opposite party.

“It’s not patriotic. It’s not good politics. It’s not good p.r. (public relations). There’s nothing good about it. But they continue to do it,” said Terry McCaffery, outreach coordinator for the registrar’s office. “And there’s nothing really we can do about it.”

It is against the law to deny someone a registration form as long as the person doing the registering has “a sufficient supply”--which is to say, at least one. It also is a misdemeanor to take someone’s registration form and not turn it in to the registrar’s office.

McCaffery said that both Republicans and Democrats engage in such practices. “One party is not any worse than the other,” she said.

The registrar’s office will be open Monday, normally the Columbus Day holiday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Tuesday from 7 a.m. to midnight--the final moment to register. Affidavits postmarked Tuesday will be accepted until Oct. 14.

Registration forms can also be obtained at city halls, libraries, post offices and county offices. They are available at many banks and most high schools, chambers of commerce, 7-Eleven convenience stores and McDonald’s.