IT MAY SEEM counterintuitive, but President George W. Bush may end up being responsible for the largest resurgence in registration of left-leaning voters since the civil rights era. In fact, progressive organizers are getting a boost from voter dissatisfaction with the president.

Voter registration groups, including Stand Up! Florida and DrivingVotes.org, have sprouted up in the last year, sending dozens of Bay Area denizens on swing state registration drives. While Stand Up! Florida is focused on preventing the disenfranchisement and underrepresentation of low-income voters that occurred in the 2000 election, DrivingVotes.org has aimed its sights squarely on getting Bush out of office.

"It has the potential to change the outcome of the coming election, which will be decided by a few thousand votes in some swing states," Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, told the Bay Guardian. Organizers have identified 17 swing states, where the margin between Bush and John Kerry is razor thin.

The left-leaning groups are focusing their efforts on low-income communities of color, which historically vote Democrat, Abramowitz said.

"We are talking to people that have the most to gain from Bush being out of office, with the expressed intent of achieving that goal," Leighton Woodhouse of DrivingVotes.org said.

Hoping to avoid another election debacle like the one in 2000, Bay Area residents Jeremy Bled and Aaron Rosenfield organized Stand Up! Florida, which is sending its 15 to 20 volunteers to battle the sweltering heat of rural northern Florida to sign up new voters and educate people on their voting rights.

"What we are offering is a way for people to be directly involved, not just theorize about it," Stand Up! Florida director Kimia Mizany said.

Mizany's group has a goal of registering 15,000 voters before the October deadline.

With a much broader focus, DrivingVotes.org was created by a small group of young Seattle residents as an online information clearinghouse for registering swing state voters. Eventually the group began sponsoring trips, and it now has more than 100 volunteers, with 27 chapters in 21 states. The most active chapters are in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and New York City.

The San Francisco chapter is currently focusing on Nevada, the nearest swing state. The group also helps those planning their own trips and organizes Bay Area events and fundraisers to get locals involved.

Similar efforts are in motion across the country. In early July, 180 New Yorkers traveled to suburban Philadelphia in a get-out-the-vote effort sponsored by America Votes. The Unity '04 Voter Empowerment campaign, a network of more than 130 organizations working to increase the African American vote, has registered almost 6,000 voters in Georgia in the last month.

Most of the volunteers are between the ages of 20 and 35, so some observers are drawing comparisons between the current effort and the voter registration drives during the civil rights movement. In the "Freedom Summer" of 1964, college students traveled en masse to the South to register African American voters.

"There is an enthusiasm that has not been in the air since the 1960s, and it is encouraging that people want to take part in the process," UC Riverside political science professor Shaun Bowler said.

Megan Cahn

Stand Up! Florida www.standupflorida.com, kimia@standupflorida.com.

DrivingVotes.org www.drivingvotes.org, mattfleming@drivingvotes.org.

Democratic National Committee (202) 863-8000, www.democrats.org.