Voter registrations rise in Maine Survey finds record numbers also could be reached in absentee ballots

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AUGUSTA – An informal survey of town and city clerks, as well as interviews with political operatives, indicates there could be a record number of new voters this election and a record number of absentee votes. The total number of new voters could be the equivalent of adding a couple of new counties to the voting list by Election Day.

“But I am not sure you can assume they all will vote. In fact, it has been my experience that the best indicator that someone will vote is that they have voted in the past,” said Bowdoin College Government Professor Chris Potholm.

“The one new wrinkle is if you sign someone up and immediately get them when they are hot and heavy for a candidate or cause and get them to vote absentee, then that could make a difference.”

From the state’s largest city to small towns, clerks say they are getting more voter registration application cards than they remember getting in previous elections and more absentee requests. With nearly a month to go before the election, several municipalities have already tallied 5 percent to 6 percent increases in registration.

By comparison, the statewide average increase was 7.3 percent in 2000 when 64,580 were added to the voter rolls.

“They just arrive in batches, in stacks of cards,” Linda Cohen, Portland city clerk and president of the Maine Town and City Clerks Association, said. “We have had 2,458 new voter registrations based on my latest computer run. That is significant.”

She said there are hundreds of registration cards still to be processed, but not all will be new voters. She said some will be address changes and many will be duplicates, so she will not venture a guess as to how many new voter registrations will result.

In January, Portland had 50,121 registered voters; Bangor had 17,466. City Clerk Patti Dubois said since Aug. 1, Bangor has added 1,179 new voters to the rolls.

“We will be adding a lot more as we catch up with the stacks of cards we have been receiving from the voter registration drives,” she said. “It’s really busy here.”

That was a recurring comment from clerks in municipalities of all sizes. Lewiston Clerk Kathleen Montejo said so far her staff has added 417 new voters to the 25,158 that were enrolled at the start of the year.

“But we will have a lot more,” she said. “I just had a stack of 200 registration cards brought in from Bates [College].”

Orono, another campus community, also has seen a lot of new voter registrations. But Clerk Susan Hart said many applications have been plagued by mistakes.

“I would say we have rejected 80 percent of the cards for errors,” she said. “We have done some counseling with students on how to correctly fill out the card.”

Hart is grateful for the early efforts to register voters. In 2000, she said, over 1,000 new voters were registered on Election Day after people waited a long time in long lines.

Mechanic Falls Clerk Shirley Marquis sent an e-mail updating her first response of 26 applications processed with 15 more to be completed. She said another 27 applications had arrived in the mail from the Secretary of State’s Office. The town started the year with 1,886 registered voters.

Not all clerks are reporting above-average interest in registration or absentee ballots. A few are reporting business as usual.

“We have had few, but I don’t think it’s really a big increase,” said Island Falls Clerk Cheryl McNally. “This is a small town up here.”

Island Falls started the year with 568 registered voters.

There are several efforts under way to encourage Mainers to register and vote. The Secretary of State’s Office keeps registration cards at its branches and asks those registering their cars or getting their driver’s license renewed if they want to register.

The two major parties and their presidential campaigns have significant registration efforts underway.

Jesse Derris, a spokesman for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in Maine, would not give specific numbers of new voters the campaign has registered.

“We have had a tremendous effort,” he said. “I will say we have registered in the thousands of new voters.”

Randy Bumps, executive director of the Maine campaign of President Bush, was equally optimistic.

He said thousands have been registered through the summer at many events.

“We have had remarkable success,” he said “There are literally thousands of new Republican voters, new independent voters, and as the president likes to say, discerning Democrats that are interested in voting for the president.”

There is also an independent, paid effort under way to register low-income Mainers and get them to vote absentee. Heather Quinn from the Maine People’s Alliance has been coordinating the effort, which she says has registered more than 12,000 voters. USAction, a national low-income advocacy group, has funded the door-to-door effort, which has 25 full-time field workers. She declined to estimate how much the effort has cost.

“We are now starting our vote-from-home effort with those we have registered,” Quinn said. “We want to vote all of them by absentee.”

The political campaigns are also seeking to get the new voters to actually vote. There have been mailings and phone calls to the new voters urging them to cast absentee ballots. And a lot of Mainers are taking advantage of the state law allowing early voting without needing a reason.

“That’s one reason we are behind in getting new registrations processed,” said Skowhegan Town Clerk Rhonda Stark. “We have already processed and sent out 175 absentee ballots and that’s ahead of four years ago.”

In both e-mail comments and in interviews, clerks across the state said absentee ballot requests are above what they were four years ago. But that may not mean the overall number of Mainers voting will increase.

“Maine is a high turnout state to begin with,” said University of Maine political science Professor Amy Fried. “I am not sure how many more people we can get to vote.”

The record turnout was in 1992 when 70.3 percent of those Mainers eligible to vote did cast votes.