VOTER ROLLS SEE 5 PERCENT DROP NUMBER OF REGISTERED PEOPLE LOWEST IN DECADE.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Although a presidential election usually sparks a rise in the number of registered voters, Los Angeles County's total is down 5 percent from last year, with the Nov. 2 election just five weeks away, officials said Monday.

Nearly 4 million county residents were registered to vote in September 2003 - just before the historic gubernatorial recall that propelled Arnold Schwarzenegger into office, Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack said. Her office's routine purging of duplicate addresses and outdated files brought that number down to less than 3.8 million currently - the lowest total in a decade.

The steepest drop was 8 percent in the number of Republicans in Los Angeles, now numbering 282,104. The number of Democrats fell 7 percent to 770,766.

The number of people who decline to state a party affiliation rose 2 percent to 653,171, nearly double the 358,652 who declined to state a party affiliation a decade ago.

The trend is accelerating statewide with ``decline to state'' increasing from 16 percent to 17 percent of the state's 15.6 million voters since March. The total number of registered voters in the state increased 2 percent since March.

The ``decline to state'' choice has become popular because those people are offered a choice of different party ballots in the primary election.

McCormack also announced Monday her office is kicking off the Got Dots? campaign, featuring a Dalmatian puppy on the cover of the sample ballots. The mascot is designed to help voters remember to fill in the bubbles completely on the InkaVote ballot that replaced the punch-card system the county used for 35 years.

``Punching your ballots is out and marking them is in,'' she said. ``A Dalmatian dog named Dots is our mascot to remind people to check their ballot and make sure they made marks for the candidates of their choices.''

And, after a year of scrutiny of electronic voting machines, McCormack said the Secretary of State's Office has authorized use of the machines for early voting in the county.

The machines will be available at 17 sites from Oct. 20 to 29.

The machines performed poorly in the March 2 election, turning away many voters in San Diego County. Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has ordered 10 counties, including San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, to use printers to keep a ballot paper trail.

``Our touch screens have worked flawlessly for four years,'' McCormack said.

McCormack said she still needs about 3,000 people to volunteer to serve as poll workers, especially in the San Fernando Valley. The job pays up to $100 a day. To volunteer, call 1-800-815-2666.

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

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Source: Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's Office

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist