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GLEN MILLS, Pa. (AP) -- Like any good political operative, 80-year-old Frank Elwood checked a "street list" that broke down the party registration for members of his retirement complex, and found that Republicans outnumbered Democrats and independents 2-to-1.

Undaunted, the volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama started a support club and recruited others in the Maris Grove complex to call 200 other senior citizens on Obama's behalf.

The retired computer programer and Korean War veteran is confident many of his peers will come around to his thinking once they know more about McCain, saying, "all it takes is talking to them, convince these people that some of these things are lies."

McCain's partisans are quietly working the ranks of the gated brick complex, too. Joseph Costa, 78, leads the McCain supporters club at Maris Grove, and points to the Republican nominee's experience.

"The senator has a long record in the Senate, prior to that in the military, and I think he's well suited to handle the very difficult problems our country is going to be facing or is facing now," Costa said.

There's been a lot of talk about young voters rockin' the vote for Obama. But because of older voters' higher turnout for elections, they could be a more decisive voting bloc in the Nov. 4 election. And, overall, polling has shown them backing 72-year-old McCain, a Vietnam POW.

That has created an organizational challenge for Obama in states such as Pennsylvania and Florida, where the percentage of residents 65 and older is among the highest in the country.

But Obama appears to be gaining some ground among those 65 and older. In a recent AP-GfK Poll, the two were in a statistical tie.

Obama's campaign in recent weeks has organized phone banks with seniors calling other seniors, like the one Elwood's helping with in Delaware County, a swing area in suburban Philadelphia. In Michigan, where about 13 percent of residents are over age 65, the campaign is seeking to recruit a thousand senior activists to sponsor pancake breakfasts, write postcards, and educate their peers about obtaining absentee ballots.

They're trying to win over voters like Rosetta Myrick, 73, a Republican who spent her summer at Maris Grove but who votes in Fort Myers, Fla., where she lives the rest of the year. She thinks Obama's a very charismatic speaker, "but I don't think he's said anything. I mean, it doesn't have substance."

Recognizing elderly voters' fears about economic future in the wake of the financial meltdown on Wall Street, Obama has turned to the issue of Social Security in television ads running in Michigan, Florida and elsewhere that say McCain wants to privatize the program.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, 63, a McCain campaign co-chairman, said Obama's campaign is using scare tactics, and knows no changes will be made that jeopardize Social Security. The Republican nominee has said "nothing's off the table" when it comes to Social Security.

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