Today is the last day to register to vote in the November election through the GeauxVote Online Registration System. (Louisiana’s in-person and by-mail registration deadline was Oct. 7.)

When the year began, Louisiana had almost 3 million registered voters, or 2,976,948 to be exact, according to Joel Watson with the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office.

As of Monday, the state had officially exceeded the 3 million voter threshold, with 3,035,360 Louisiana residents registered. That’s an increase of 58,412, or just under 2 percent.

Typically, voter registrations are highest during presidential election years, when even folks who aren’t political junkies are thinking about politics.

What’s interesting to note about Louisiana’s experience is that almost all of the new registrations this year, or 54,387 voters, have come online since July 1. 

It’s hard to say what nudges a particular citizen to register. But events that have happened since July 1 that may have helped to motivate some of those registrations include:

— Secretary of State Nancy Landry launched a statewide tour, which concludes this week

— The July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump

— The Republican National Convention was held July 15 through July 18

— President Joe Biden dropped out of the election on July 21 and was quickly replaced at the top of the Democrats’ ticket by Vice President Kamala Harris

— The Democratic National Convention was held Aug. 19 through Aug. 22

— The Harris/Trump debate was held on Sept. 10

— Sept. 16 through Sept. 20 was National Voter Registration Week

While Louisiana is a “red” state, in that it tends to vote for Republicans statewide, plenty of people who used to support Democrats still are registered as such.

But that’s slowly changing. 

At the start of the year, Democrats had 1.14 million registered voters, which represented 38.48 percent of the total.

Republicans had 1 million (33.91 percent), while another 821,906 (27.61 percent) did not belong to one of the two largest political parties.

Since Jan. 1, the GOP has added 42,809 registered voters, while the Democrats have lost 8,930.

An additional 24,533 have registered without affiliating themselves with one of the two major parties. 

Early voting for the Nov. 5 election will take place Friday, Oct. 18, through Tuesday, Oct. 29 (excluding Sundays), from 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.

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