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Groups want voter sign-up extended in Ike-hit Texas counties
03:03 PM CDT on Friday, September 26, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas — A coalition of citizen groups urged Gov. Rick Perry on Friday to use emergency powers to extend the Oct. 6 voter registration deadline for Texas counties hit hardest by Hurricane Ike.
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Houston Votes, Equality Texas, People for the American Way, the League of Women Voters and others said they want Perry to extend the deadline for at least seven days in the 29 hurricane-ravaged counties that have been declared disaster areas.
"Many Texans already have lost all their possessions to Hurricane Ike; they should not also lose their right to vote this November," said Fred Lewis, spokesman for Houston Votes, an association of nonprofit groups that is registering people to vote in Harris County.
Under state law, Texans who want to cast a ballot in the Nov. 4 general election must have their voter registration applications postmarked by Oct. 6.
Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said the governor would have to be asked by individual counties to extend the deadline before he could make such a decision. She said he hasn't received a local request and hasn't been told by any county official that there is a registration problem.
Extending the registration deadline would be highly unusual. The Texas Secretary of State's Office said it had no record of that happening in at least the past two decades.
The coalition of citizens groups said hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Texas who are still unable to live in their homes or have basics like electricity are not yet thinking about Election Day.
Those most likely to miss out on registering will be the modest- and low-income residents of the hurricane zone, Lewis said.
The coalition said its effort is nonpartisan and that those devastated by Hurricane Ike are of all political parties.
Randall Terrell, political director for Equality Texas, which lobbies for gay rights and has been working to register Houston voters, said the nature of a democracy is that people have a fair chance to participate.
"It's hard to do door-to-door registration when people don't have doors," he said.
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