Barack Obama has kicked off his general election campaign with a two-week road trip through battleground states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Wisconsin.

A key component of Obama's 50-state strategy is increased turnout among African Americans and young people. Obama's "Vote for Change," a national voter registration and mobilization drive, hopes to register millions of new voters.

The co-chairs include Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Usher and Kerry Washington.





Allied groups are also mounting voter registration campaigns in key states, including Louisiana where nearly new 70,000 voters have already registered. And already there are problems. Louisiana Politics reports:

How many of those applying actually become registered to vote is a hard question for swamped registrars to answer, as their staffs work 12-hour days to sort through piles of cards dropped off by the thousands.

Registrars say most of the applications, which must be signed by applicants, are valid and will result in large numbers of new Democratic voters this fall. But officials also report a large number of problem applications, many from people who are already registered, while others with missing, bad, even comical information.

In politics, for every action there is a reaction. Voter turnout is not a zero-sum game. Obama can get more of his supporters to the polls -- but so can the other side. Bernie Pinsonat, a pollster with Southern Media & Opinion Research, told Stateline.org:

In Louisiana, Obama will definitely energize black voters to a bigger-than-normal turnout. But the white, anti-Obama turnout will at least match that and could be even higher.

Stateline.org also reports:

But even if Democrats do produce strong candidates, they face a potentially serious drag: the possibility that Obama's presence on the ticket, given his race and his liberal views on many issues, could drive conservative white voters to the polls in a way that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, John McCain, might otherwise not.

Meanwhile, the North Carolina Republican Party taunted some Democratic candidates for not showing up at Obama's campaign rally in Raleigh.