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Tuesday was the last day for Californians to register to vote for the March 5 election. But looking at the empty registration tables at City Hall that day, you wouldn’t have known it.  

The Department of Elections was hosting an all day voter registration drive. The nonprofit A. Philip Randolph Institute had even volunteered to shuttle unregistered eligible voters to city hall. But by 3 p.m. only 60 of San Francisco’s thousands of unregistered eligible voters had shown up.  

With a primary gubernatorial slot at stake, an ongoing energy crisis and election reform on the ballot, the city’s chief election officer said she hoped more would register before the drive ended, at midnight.  

“It’s very important every San Franciscan comes out to vote,” Tammy Haygood said. “We’re going to stay open to give everyone the chance to register.” 

Tuesday’s rain was limiting the big gains in registration the department expected, Haygood said. Poll workers planned to set up registration tables outside city hall, in easy view of potential voters. But the weather forced them into the basement. 

But the department can’t blame the rain for low registration, said the co-author of an initiative that would allow people to register to vote the day of an election. “This is not a day that tells everybody, ‘Okay it’s Feb. 19, time to go out and register,’” said Chip Neilsen, an attorney for the Election Day Voter Registration campaign, which is trying to get its initiative on the November ballot. “People should be trying to encourage people to register everyday.” 

Six states allow voter registration on Election Day, and all say it has increased their voters’ participation, according to a report by the think-tank Alliance for a Better Campaign. Two years ago the state legislature changed the deadline for registration, giving Californians an additional two weeks to register.  

Though Democrats generally support last-minute voter registration, Gov. Gray Davis is skeptical of it, said Hilary McLean, a Davis spokesperson. “He does have concerns about the integrity of the voting process,” she said. “He would want assurance that there is adequate protection to the system.” 

Voter registration is intended to prevent ballot stuffing, the practice of rigging an election by having the same people vote more than once. Early voter registration deadlines give a registrar ample time to compile lists of registered voters that can be used to cross check individual voters’ identities.  

But early registration deadlines aren’t the only way to ensure the integrity of an election, said Bruce Cain, chair of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “It is technologically possible to register on the same day and prevent fraud,” he said. “I’m 100 percent in favor of it. We should have done it along time ago.” 

“It shouldn’t be that you have a waiting period,” said James Bryant, president of A. Philip Randolph Institute, the non-profit that shuttled people who wanted to register to city hall Tuesday. “It’s not like you’re getting a gun permit.” Or maybe it is, he said. 

“It’s a political weapon if you can get your community to vote,” he said. 

Despite occasional bouts with low voter turnout, San Francisco generally lives up to its reputation as one of the most politically active cities in the country, said David Binder, a political consultant based in San Francisco.  

Binder’s 1999 study showed 85 percent of San Francisco’s eligible voters were registered.  

“If you want sunshine and entertainment, you go to L.A.,” Binder said. “If you want that big city feel, you go to New York. If you want to be active in politics you go to San Francisco.” 

But registering isn’t the same as voting. Experts say turnout at the March 5 election is likely to be low again, as it was in the November 2001 election when only 30 percent of San Francisco’s registered voters turned out. Twenty-seven percent of California’s likely voters don’t even know there’s an election March 5, a recent Field poll showed.  

Recent allegations of corruption in San Francisco’s Department of Elections mean more voters are likely to stay away from the polls, said Karen Alexander, co-president of California Voter Foundation. Lost or misfiled ballots led the secretary to state to launch an investigation into the November 2000 election.  

“There’s a chronic perception of chronic election fraud in San Francisco,” Alexander said.