It could be because the process was made simpler this year: Voters no longer have to make a trip to a town office to pick up an absentee ballot; they can do it electronically.
The state's upgraded online absentee ballot request service is available at www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/AbsenteeBallot/index.pl.
The service first began in November 2008. But this year, it was enhanced to make it easier for residents to obtain the ballot, whether they live in Maine full-time or are stationed in the military.
The service allows any registered Maine voter to request their absentee ballot by completing and submitting a request form online, then printing and signing the completed form to mail to their municipal clerk. Or voters can print a blank request form to fill out by hand and deliver to their municipal clerk.
All Maine municipalities are now required to accept electronic requests for absentee ballots. Up until this election, towns could opt out.
As of Wednesday morning, Randolph Town Clerk Lynn Mealey said she received 13 electronic requests for absentee ballots for Tuesday's election.
"It's an easier way to go," Mealey said. "Last year, e-mails came directly to the towns, and there was no way of making sure everything was correct. But now we have a special place where we go to online to check to see if we have any (pending) applications. We download the (ballot requests) and then process them like we do all other absentee ballots."
Julie Flynn, deputy secretary for the state Bureau of Corporations, Elections & Commissions, said only 50 towns participated in 2008. Now, 500 Maine communities do, she said.
"For the 500 municipalities, this is Web-based," she said. "Municipal clerks log in and have a password and then they can retrieve requests for absentee ballots."
Town clerks process the requests and mail out absentee ballots, she said.
The old system, when e-mail requests went directly to the town, sometimes didn't work because e-mail systems often treated the requests as junk and rejected them.
So her department worked with InforME, the state's eGovernment service provider, and developed a central voter-registration center that included information for service members and overseas voters.
This brought the state into compliance with the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, a law aimed at improving delivery of absentee ballots to military members or voters living outside the country.
"We've issued over 1,200 absentee ballots electronically to the military and overseas voters," Flynn said. "We have a bunch that have been returned already, around 400, and hopefully we'll get a lot more of them by Tuesday."
In November 2009, 10,301 absentee ballots were requested through the online system, according to Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.
For the June primary election, 1,776 voters from 217 municipalities requested ballots through the online service.
So far this election, there have been more than 110,000 requests for absentee ballots. More than 236,000 absentee ballots were cast in the 2008 election.
Republicans are keeping pace with Democrats compared to two years ago when it comes to absentee ballots in Maine.
Figures provided by the secretary of state indicate that, as of Thursday, Republicans had returned 28,803 ballots, compared to 29,565 for Democrats.
That gives Democrats a slight edge, 37 percent to 36 percent.
Republicans are doing much better compared to two years ago in Maine. Around this time in 2008, Democrats accounted for 45 percent of early votes, compared to 29 percent for Republicans.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mechele Cooper
Quelle/Source: Kennebec Journal, 29.10.2010
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