Registration Forms

Stars share recipes You can eat like the stars with the help of the Canned Food Alliance's "Five Star Celebrity Cookbook." The book features 31 recipes, including 15 from celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell, Isaac Hayes and Patti LaBelle. The book is available now through March by making a donation of any amount to the Share Our Strength program, which fights hunger in America. For more information, click on www.mealtime .org. Shopping for diabetics Area Giants are offering store tours on healthy shopping practices for people living with diabetes.

The Senate has now passed its version of the Motor Voter Bill. Like the House version passed earlier this year, this one makes applications for drivers' licenses (and renewals) the equivalent of voter registration forms and also authorizes uniform mail-in voter registration. The versions differ in some other respects. If agreement is reached between House and Senate, President Clinton is commited to sign the bill into law. He personally lobbied to get Senate votes for it.Republican opposition to the bill had emphasized the cost the program will impose on states and the increased potential for fraud.

Dried pine needles, a few red candle stubs and tinsel-tangled dust bunnies are all that is left to remind me of Christmas.Gone are all of those wonderful excuses to postpone nasty routine chores. The holidays are over, and it's back to business.This week's blast of snow, ice and frigid air only reinforces that old winter hibernation habit that seems to creep in this time of year. All too quickly, drab winter skies give way to the winter blahs and the inevitable couch-potato syndrome.But this year, I'm going to whip my sprouting spuds into shape before they root in front of the tube.

MIAMI - Not a single ballot has been counted in the presidential election, yet Florida is already teeming with lawsuits charging the state and its county elections supervisors with voter disenfranchisement, a legal muddle that will likely grow worse before Election Day. Yesterday, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a suit seeking to require election officials to count provisional ballots regardless of where they are cast. And Tuesday, labor unions and voting-rights groups sued to stop the disqualification of more than 10,000 incomplete registration forms in Florida, accusing the state of overly restrictive rules that disproportionately hurt minority voters.

Besieged state election officials are staying late, working weekends and hiring additional help to process a record number of people registering to vote for the fall election. Days before the deadline, nearly 3 million Marylanders are eligible to cast ballots next month, more than 10 percent more than the number who signed up in time for the 2000 election. Voters in Maryland have until 9 p.m. Tuesday to complete their registration forms and get them by mail or in person to their local boards of election.

IF VOTER registration trends of the last four years continue, a magic moment for the Republican Party could come as early as this June. By some calculations, the Maryland GOP will break the Democrats' long-held 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration by that date. Being on the short end of a 1.9-to-1 registration disadvantage might not seem much of a victory, but it will inspire partisan Republicans to raise their glasses in a toast to the future.The ratios are statewide figures. They include Baltimore city.

BOSTON -- Jemima isn't yet 25, so she never had a chance to ''vote often and early for James Michael Curley,'' who died in 1958. But the crooked legend of Boston politics -- who was, not always at different times, a congressman, mayor, Massachusetts governor and prison inmate -- would surely have admired Jemima's electoral diligence in 1996.Not that Jemima went to the polls last week. She didn't even leave the house. She didn't have to. Weeks earlier, she had gotten an absentee ballot from the Board of Elections in Cleveland, Ohio.

The more than 1 million vehicle registration renewal forms being sent to Maryland motorists over the next year will be accompanied by something extra - ads for a free oil change and $25 off on an eye exam. The advertising packets are part of an agreement between two state agencies and a Waltham, Mass.-based company that saves the Motor Vehicle Administration $100,000 a year and helps the Department of Business and Economic Development promote in-state tourism. Imagitas Inc. has taken over the printing and mailing of the MVA's vehicle registration forms in exchange for the right to include advertisements in the envelope.

If you want to vote in Maryland's Sept. 13 Republican or Democratic primary election and are not registered, you must register by 5 p.m. Aug. 15.To register, you must give your name, address, phone number, date of birth, place of birth and make a party affiliation choice. You may decline to affiliate or write in a party other than Democrat or Republican. But if you do not choose Democrat or Republican, you cannot vote in the primary. Maryland has a closed-party primary election, meaning that in the primary you can only vote the party -- Democrat or Republican -- that you designate as your affiliation.

WASHINGTON -- One state Motor Vehicle Administration employee in Baltimore said he threw out voter registration forms, and numerous other officials weren't implementing the "motor voter" law throughout Maryland, according to depositions filed yesterday in federal court.The new evidence, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., came on a day in which the court rejected the state's request to dismiss the fund's suit and ordered hearings next month.