Registered to vote? Clock is ticking

If you live in Pennsylvania, Tuesday is the last day to register to vote in the presidential election.

You can visit your county election board, or register online at VOTESPA.com.

Deputy Secretary of State Marian Schneider says you can even do the whole thing on your smartphone.

“If you text ‘P-A’  to `2Vote’, which is 2-8-6-8-3, you will get a text message and it will  take you a landing page right on your phone,” Schneider said.

 If you’ve moved and want to vote at your new address, you’ll have to update your registration.

If you mail a registration form, it must be postmarked by midnight Tuesday night.

If you want to hand it in in person, Schneider said, you’d be smart to get there by the close of business, or call your county election board to see if it plans late hours.

Registration drives have been roaring along for weeks now, and they’ve produced some results.

As of Friday, 8,543,334 Pennsylvanians were registered. That number is sure to grow, but it’s already about 40,000 more than were registered for the 2012 election, though a couple hundred thousand short of the 2008 race.

I checked census estimates for our voting-eligible population, and calculated that as a state we’re about 88 percent signed up.

That makes sense to Roberta Winters, president of the Radnor Township League of Women Voters. She’s been registering voters for 10 years and finds most folks are registered and ready.

“It’s increasingly more difficult to find people who have not become registered to vote yet,” Winters said. She gets the largest responses at high schools or junior colleges where young people sign up for the first time.

Delaware residents have until Saturday to register. New Jersey’s deadline is Oct. 18.