It will be several days before the final numbers are in, but the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office is reporting an upsurge in new voter registrations. Early estimates put the number of new voters at approximately thirty-five thousand. But, training new voters on how to use those electronic voting machines falls to local community organizers. And, that can be a challenge because some -- including newly minted American citizens -- may not be as computer savvy as their younger counterparts.
Gila Gonzalez is with Latinos United of Carroll County. Days before last year’s presidential primary, Gonzalez took a group of first time voters to visit their local polling place.
"I got them into the hall, before the primaries, and showed them and they were able to see it. and I was explaining to them how it worked, that they had to touch the screen, from to the inserting of the card, until the moment that they would be finished."Percentage wise, while the greatest jump in first time voters has been in the Hispanic community, the smallest gain was seen in the Asian American community with less than 500 new voters registered since 2004. In the African American community, the number of new voters has increased nearly forty thousand since 2004.
