HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Monday is the last day in Pennsylvania to register to vote in the Nov. 3 election in which the presidential battleground state is playing a central role in the contest between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Voter registration in Pennsylvania has already hit a record high in this cycle.
The total number of state voters has passed 9 million, state elections official said Monday. That includes more than 4.2 million Democrats, more than 3.5 million Republicans, just over 895,000 independents and about 407,000 voters registered with another party.
Democrats hold a substantial registration edge, but Republicans have narrowed the gap by about 200,000 from 2016′s presidential election to about 700,000 now, thanks in part to Democratic party-switchers.
State data also shows that, through Sept. 10, about 200,000 more Democrats than Republicans who did not vote in 2016 have since canceled their registration.
That happened either due to requesting cancellation, dying, moving out of state, being successfully challenged as ineligible or not responding to voter list maintenance notices.
In 2016, voter registration was just over 8.7 million and 6.1 million people voted. Thanks to Pennsylvania’s year-old law that greatly expanded mail-in voting, many more people are voting earlier.
As of Friday, just over 683,000 ballots had been returned, three-quarters of them by Democrats, according to state data.
ABOVE PHOTO: Walter Carter, 74, of Woodbridge, Va., who attended the original March on Washington, attends 2020’s March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. “This March is a celebration anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington,” says Carter, “and the issues are very similar even though so much time has passed.” (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
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