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GREENSBORO — Syene Jasmin caught the bug when he heard the presidential hopeful speak.

Obamarama.

Jasmin, 19, a journalism major at N.C. A&T, said he checked out Barack Obama during a November rally at N.C. Central University in Durham.

"I fell in love with the campaign," Jasmin said of the Democratic senator from Illinois.

Jasmin is now part of a local surge in new and young voter registrations with the Guilford County Board of Elections. Almost 5,000 new Guilford County voters registered in January and February; more than one-third are under age 25. Fewer than 2,000 registered during the same two months four years ago.

New voters say they want to make history or just make a change in the Oval Office.

So sign up Jazmin Rogers-Blackshear, 18, a freshman at A&T.

"That either a woman could be a president or a black man could be president, that's the main reason that I want to vote," she said.

Others see it as an American's duty.

"I don't want to be one of those people who doesn't vote," said high school senior Lindsay Adamson of Summerfield. She's 17 now but will be 18 on Election Day.

Adamson mentioned the voter's refrain: If you don't vote, you can't complain. And that her one vote counts.

"I could be the difference," she said.

For Jasmin, after he came back from the November Obama rally, he began going door-to-door in A&T dormitories with voter registration applications, urging students to fill out their cards.

"The faster we get them to go out and register, the faster they will sign up for early voting," Jasmin said.

Jasmin said he has delivered more than 300 completed forms to Guilford's elections office.

Of the 4,988 new registrations in the first two months of this year in Guilford County, 1,863 are from people younger than 25.

The difference over the last presidential cycle is huge. In 2004, there were 1,758 new registrations in the first two months, with 532 from 18- to 25-year-olds.

State and national new voter registrations are increasing, too.

"We had been receiving, for the last couple of weeks or so, about 1,500 to 2,200 voter registration applications daily," said Johnnie Mclean, deputy director of the State Board of Elections.

In 2004, her office received only a few hundred a day, she said.

"This is, by far, the largest we've seen," Mclean said.

One reason for the state's uptick are prefilled voter registration applications from a Washington-based voting advocacy group that were mailed to thousands of private mailboxes in North Carolina. Recipients can verify their information and mail the cards to the state elections office.

Page Gardner, president of Women's Voices. Women Vote, said the response to her group's cards in this election cycle is far greater than in previous years. For this election cycle, which began in 2007, the group sent mass registrations to 22 states.

On Greensboro campuses, the drive is just to get people registered. And those running the drives are finding that many students are already signed up to vote.

Alva Jones Jr., vice president of UNCG's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, held registration drives before the school's basketball games.

"It's probably one of the most important things that you can do, to participate on a national scale in an election that has global implications," Jones said about voting. "You're choosing the leader of the free world."

And UNCG's student government association is planning a big voter drive this fall.

"We're trying to target a variety of organizations to reach out to all kinds of people, even those that feel that there's no need to vote, that it doesn't count," said Donald Gaddy, a freshman class senator in UNCG's student government.

They hope to take the drive beyond simply voter registration, Gaddy said.

"It's voter awareness versus voter registration." Gaddy said. "Go out and become aware of what's around you."

The upcoming primary may also be helping spike registration totals.

This year, as opposed to other election years, it appears the North Carolina primary May 6 could carry some weight as Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama continue to fight for their party's spot on the presidential ticket.

Clinton took a bit of Obama's steam with recent wins in Ohio and Texas, making later primaries such as North Carolina's more relevant.

And an open presidential seat that two-term President Bush is leaving during wartime in a country where his administration carries low public approval numbers may be another reason for the high registration numbers, election analysts said.

"When you have a good contest going, it does generate people to get registered and turn out," said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a Washington political consulting firm specializing in census and election administration.

There's also the potential for the country to elect its first female or black president in the race against Republican Sen. John McCain.

"It's moving," Gardner said. "It's a historic election, and the candidacy and the majority of the country thinks we are headed down the wrong track."

Brace agreed that with those factors leading to the election, the number of new registrations could translate into high voter turnout.

"Some of the fears that election administrators have is they're likely to be deluged with voters," Brace said. "And they've got to be prepared and with more machines and ballots."

Not that high voter turnout is a terrible problem.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com