Utah polls this fall will be hopping

Even though the deadline to register by mail to vote has passed, Utah residents can continue to register to vote until Oct. 20.

You just have to do it in person at your county clerk's office. And it looks like Utah is in for a year of record voter turnout.

Emmeline Asay, 18, and Staci Bishop, 19, are voting for the first time this year. The two Farmington friends stopped by the Davis County Clerk's Office Tuesday to fill out a short form, and as long as the information checks out, they'll receive voter information cards shortly before the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Both said they feel it's their duty to vote and expect to vote for the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain.

Asay and Bishop are just two of the hundreds of people a day who have been registering to vote in counties across the Wasatch Front.

Davis County Clerk/Auditor Steve Rawlings' staff has been inundated with voter registrations in recent weeks.

Around 400 people a day have been registering to vote, and some absentee ballots have already been cast.

For the primary election in June, one of the lowest-voting turnout elections, just over 154,000 people had registered to vote in Davis County. But as of Tuesday, when the flurry of mail-in forms began arriving, that number had jumped up to more than 160,000.

It's a similar story elsewhere along the Wasatch Front.

In Weber County, elections administrator Gloria Berrett said about 117,000 people had been registered in June, but now, about 131,000 people are registered.

In Utah County, Clerk/Auditor Bryan Thompson reported that student leaders on the campuses of Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University held voter registration drives that resulted in a combined 4,600 registration forms.

That brings Utah County up to more than 248,000 registered voters, with a few thousand more expected by mail. In June, Utah County had just over 243,000 registered voters.

Salt Lake County, not immune from the crush, is reporting more than 604,000 registered voters, up from June's total of 583,000.

And more are expected through this month.

Clerks up and down the Wasatch Front are predicting well over 80 percent of voters to show up to the polls for this year's election.

Around October, there's always an uptick in voter registrations and address or party changes around a presidential election, Thompson said.