Based on the latest figures, Harford County may have enough active registered voters to qualify for two additional early voting sites in next year's presidential election.
Jim Massey, the county's board of elections director, said Monday the total voter registration count in the county stands at 150,125. The county must have 150,000 voters to qualify for three total sites, and new registrations are continuing.
"On August 1, 2011, the State Board of Elections will determine the final active voter registration to base the determine the number of early voting sites," Massey explained via e-mail. "The local board must make their recommendations of early voting site locations by Aug. 18. The State Board of Elections has the final approval on the recommended locations for early voting."
Massey said his board is recommending the McFaul Activity Center in Bel Air as the first early voting site. If the county is considered to have 150,000 active voters, the board is recommending two more sites at Edgewood Library and Aberdeen Senior Center.
In the 2010 gubernatorial primary and general elections, the only early voting site in Harford was the Bel Air Library, where the turnout was among the most active in the state.
Voter registration rose in June from 149,366 to 149,893, as the county's Democratic Central Committee pushed to sign residents up in hopes that the two new voting sites would be in Democrat-heavy districts. Both Edgewood and Aberdeen have large numbers of registered Democrats.
The political breakdown of registrations stands at 61,662 Democrats and 63,672 Republicans as of Monday, indicating the Republicans are beginning to expand the lead they established last year for the first time in the county's history.
That latest breakdown includes adding 794 new voters (263 Democrats and 286 Republicans) and reinstating 15 voters, Massey said.
It also includes cancelling or inactivating 282 registrations. Changes of party affiliation were also processed over the past month, which included a loss of 34 for Democrats and gain of 19 for Republicans.
Wendy Sawyer, chairman of the Harford Democratic Central Committee, said her organization is not letting up in its registration drive just yet.
"The number that we have today may not be the number on Aug. 1," Sawyer said. "We are going to continue the next couple of weekends to register voters."
She said the effort to sign up voters has not been limited to the Democrats.
"League of Women Voters has also been doing it, not just us," she said.
Local Republicans have been less sanguine about the registration effort. Last month, Scott DeLong, chairman of the Harford Republican Central Committee, noted his party is always registering new voters, but as far as he was concerned, one centrally located early voting site, like the one in Bel Air last election, was adequate to accommodate those wanting to vote early.
DeLong also said he felt additional early voting sites would be an unnecessary expense.
Nevertheless, Sawyer said she is confident about getting more polling sites and having it positively impact Democrats in the next election.
"We are very excited and very happy about where it stands now," she said of the registration drive. "I do think it has been well worth the voters … I'm very optimistic that the numbers are going to hold."
Sawyer also said the Democratic Central Committee is not prepared to rest anytime soon.
"Our next goal is to contact those voters and see if we can get them involved in the election," she said.