The end is coming.

They can deny it until they turn blue in the face, but Republicans know that, after eight years, the marathon of disasters the Bush administration has put the country through is about to end.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel for the McCain-Palin ticket.

This time around, minority and poor voters are actively participating in the electoral process like never before. They were involved in registering new voters, and now they are working hard to make sure those new voters go to the polls on Nov. 4.

"We just launched the Immigrant Voter Action Campaign – a huge get-out-the-vote effort focusing on Latino, Asian, Arab, and other communities in Staten Island and Brooklyn," said Ana María Archila, the co-director of Make the Road New York, a grass-roots organization with offices in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens.

"Our intention is to help 16,000 voters go to the polls in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and 7,000 more in Queens."

This outreach campaign to immigrant voters is especially focused on Staten Island and Brooklyn, said the young and energetic Archila because, according to the 2000 Census, those are the boroughs where the immigrant population – especially Latino – has grown the most.

"For instance, in Staten Island, the Hispanic population grew 100% from 1990 to 2000," Archila said.

Every day, 50 volunteers from the Immigrant Voter Action Campaign go into the immigrant neighborhoods. Their purpose is to talk to registered voters and describe the demographic changes and community needs that gave rise to the campaign. The volunteers also try to explain why the 2008 elections are so important to local immigrant communities.

On the last weekend before Election Day, the campaign plans to have a team of 200 people canvassing the neighborhoods. By Nov. 4, their goal is to have knocked on 90,000 doors.

"Immigrant citizens, like everybody else, worry about the war, the economic crisis, education, health care. But one of their strongest motivations for voting is the need for comprehensive immigration reform," Archila said. "We tell them that they are the representatives of all the other immigrants who cannot vote."

One important aspect of this campaign, Archila stated with pride, is that voters are not tied to a party or a candidate. "It is the immigrants making their own decisions," she said.

The Make the Road New York campaign is just one of many going on all over the country.

Fourteen organizations that came together in the We Are America Alliance have spearheaded a nationwide voter mobilization drive in the Latino, Asian and immigrant communities – with unprecedented success.

Along with other partner campaigns, the alliance, which was started two years ago, has contributed to a surge in naturalization applications – more than 1.4 million immigrants applied for citizenship in 2007 – and has collectively registered more than 500,000 new voters.

Next, the Alliance is focusing its efforts in a Get Out The Vote campaign in 13 states, including New York, and the key battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico.

As they do every election, Republicans are trying to make a case that these organizations committed voter fraud. Their real intention, though, is to stop as many new voters and poor people as possible from going to the polls.

But as Archila said, "This year, we are making sure our vote counts."