Nearly half of the 126,000 immigrants in New York State who have applied to become American citizens have lost their chance to vote in the presidential election because of processing backlogs in the federal Department of Homeland Security, according to a new study.

The New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella group and advocacy arm for more than 150 community organizations serving newcomers, found that about 60,000 prospective citizens in New York were not naturalized in time for last week’s state voter registration deadline. The situation is similar, if not as severe, in other states, including several swing states. “New York is the worst by far,” said Margaret McHugh, director of the coalition. “But the numbers in some battleground states are startling. This has a potential impact on the election.”

In Florida, where the margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election was 537 votes, an estimated 25,000 new citizens would be eligible to vote if they had been naturalized within the six months set as a national standard by President Bush, the coalition calculated.

Instead, the Miami office of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, now part of the Homeland Security Department –– has a 21-month backlog.

In New Jersey, backlogs have shut out about 12,000 immigrants from voting, the analysis found, and in Arizona, where processing now takes 13 months, about 6,500 would-be citizens were unable to vote.

The analysis used government figures for the number of pending cases, along with an average approval rate of 75 percent. It applied the difference between actual processing times and the six-month standard to estimate how many would have become citizens before voter registration deadlines had the standard been met. It concluded that New York had more would-be citizens shut out of the election than any other state.

Even some who finally reached citizenship last week, after long delays, discovered that they were not in time, said Vladimir Epshteyn, president of the Russian-American Voters Educational League. He told how an elderly Brooklyn man rushed to him for help filling out a voter registration card a few days ago. The Brooklyn man and his wife had applied for citizenship at the same time, but for reasons that were never clear, his application was delayed for more than a year and a half after hers was granted, Mr. Epshteyn said.

Many factors contribute to delays in naturalization. Among those cited by the coalition is a shortage of staff members to handle multiple security checks required for every applicant. Each applicant must pass through at least three layers of security checks, including an Interagency Border Information System database known as IBIS; an F.B.I. fingerprint check, which is valid for only 15 months; and an F.B.I. name check.

According to the coalition, immigration officials say the F.B.I. takes a long time to respond to name checks. “This is dragging out the processing times for every type of application,” the coalition paper said.

(By Permission, The New York Times)