LOS ANGELES -- In what political analysts say is the greatest expansion of voter rolls in the nation's history, more than 5 million Americans have registered to vote in the eight months since the National Voter Registration Act was enacted.
Several states report that the act -- called the "Motor Voter Law" because it permits people to register while obtaining a driving permit -- has generated threefold increases, and greater, in the pace of registrations compared with earlier years.
"There's never been a massive registration like this in such a brief period in all of the country's political history," said Lloyd Leonard, an elections specialist for the League of Women
Voters, a national organization that promotes voting.
"When women and 18-year-olds got the vote," he said, "they started off registering much more slowly. But back then, for the most part, they couldn't register when getting a driving permit, which is the key provision of 'Motor Voter.' Just about everybody drives."
Estimates are that by the turn of the century, if the surge generated by the new law continues, at least four of every five adult Americans will be registered to vote, compared with about three of every five now.
Whether increased registration will improve voter turnout on election days is only a guess at this point. In recent years, turnout has hovered around 50 percent of the eligible adult population, one of the lowest participation figures of any major democracy.
As for the politics of the new voters, only about half the states register by party and none of those that do has yet produced a breakdown. However, early indications are that, while Democrats and Republicans have benefited from the new law, the biggest surge in registrations appears to have been toward the independent column. That would tend to confirm recent election turnouts, which have also shown a rise in independent voting.
When the proposal was making its way through Congress, some opponents, mainly Republicans, feared that it would result in major Democratic gains because it would encourage registration the poor and disadvantaged, who have tended to vote for Democrats for the past 50 years.
"There's no real evidence of that so far," Mr. Leonard said. "The most striking thing we're getting is just the raw number increases overall, regardless of party."
