Latinos Rush to Register New Voters in Pa.

There are 22 percent more eligible Latino voters in Pennsylvania in 2012 than there were in 2008, but after changes made to state identification requirements for voting, nearly 1 in 6 of them may not be eligible.

If state officials are correct, approximately 100,000 Latinos won't be able to vote in this November's election because they do not meet new voter ID rules in the state.

The large number of eligible voters had activists and organizers working in overdrive to add them to voter rolls by this Tuesday's deadline, reports CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, but new requirements for a state ID passed by the state’s Republican-led Legislature threw a wrench into already active voter registration drives.

“The work and energy that I’ve seen, and the attention, around the elections this year, I’ve never experienced in this community,” Cynthia Figeroa, Director of the activist group Congreso, told O’Brien.

With the days for voters to register properly quickly running out, several groups have been knocking on doors throughout Latino communities around the state, hoping to get these voters registered before it's too late.

Because of the importance of issues immigration issues to Latinos in this election cycle, it is believed that, in Pennsylvania, the estimated half a million voters in this group could “pave the way to the White House,” O’Brien reported.