As is typical during presidential election years, especially when a sitting president cannot run again having served two terms, voter interest increases as responsible citizens ensure they are registered.
As of January 31, Montgomery County reported 46,258 registered voters, exclusive of the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg. Just before the Oct. 6 deadline for registering for the Nov. 4 elections, the county increased nearly 12% to 51,790.
For the same time period Blacksburg went up from 14,403 to 18,330 registered voters, or more than a 27% increase. In Christiansburg, these figures went from 12,994 up to 13,750. This represents an increase of a bit less than 6%.
From this, one could presume the campaign to get students registered was effective. One could also be hopeful most Christiansburg residents were already registered, rather than disengaged from the political process. Historically, the county's population of "age 17 and under" has been about 17% (with approximately 9,600 of these being school age children), so this shows the county's population is indeed around 100,000 or higher.
What is more important than these numbers is that citizens do in fact vote on Nov. 4th and stop the downward trend of low voter turn-out in any election -- national, state, county or town. The only time your vote doesn't count is when it isn't cast.