With Election Day approaching, party representatives are making sure that voters’ rights are protected and that everyone who shows up at the polls gets to cast a ballot.

More than 250 lawyers have volunteered through the Maine Democratic Party to go to the polls on Election Day, Nov. 2, and ensure that anyone who wants to cast a ballot is allowed to do so, Jesse Derris, a spokesman for Democratic candidate U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s campaign in Maine, said Thursday.

“It’s important to point out that this isn’t a partisan thing; it’s a voting thing,” Derris said. “We want everybody who should and can vote to vote.”

Republicans say it’s not necessary to have lawyers at the polls and denied accusations that they are the ones challenging voters.

“What the Democrats are talking about is voter intimidation, and to send Democrat lawyers to the polls is voter intimidation,” Dwayne Bickford, a spokesman for George W. Bush’s campaign in Maine, said Thursday.

Derris noted that although lawyers will be stationed at the polls throughout the state, the focus will be on university and college campuses, in particular Bates College in Lewiston and the University of Maine at Orono.

“There have been problems at both these places in the past that have been well documented,” Derris said.

Residents contested student voter registrations at the University of Maine in 2002, but town officials don’t expect any problems this year.

“It looks to me like they’re trying to encourage everyone to vote,” Orono Town Clerk Wanda Thomas has said. “I don’t anticipate [anyone contesting]. I don’t know who would be doing it.”

Derris said the effort to ensure voters’ rights comes after Republicans tried to deny residents their right to vote, slowing down the process and creating long lines at the polls that make it hard for people to vote.

“What Republicans have done in the past is challenge massive groups of people,” Derris said. “That’s not right.”

Republican Party representatives disagree, and Bickford said his party hasn’t organized lawyers to send to the polls on Election Day. The Republicans have attorneys that work on the election process who handle issues as they arise, but they are not stationed at the polls.

“But what I’m hearing from the Democrats is they don’t trust the local officials to run the election properly,” Bickford said. “We have gone on college campuses this year to register voters. Why would we challenge voters that we registered?”

The Republican spokesman said that the party is trying to encourage voters in its party to get to the polls Nov. 2 or to vote by absentee ballot.

“I just don’t understand how they can make these baseless claims when we’ve been out engaging voters on the street, on the phone and on college campuses,” Bickford said.

Democrats say recent changes in Maine law will make it easier for voters to cast their ballots, and they’re hoping it will reduce the number of challenges. Anyone who challenges a voter has to sign an affidavit, and the voter still is allowed to cast a challenged ballot.

“But we’re not taking any chances, and that’s why we’re going to have an army of attorneys out on Election Day,” Derris said.

He said it’s true that the more voters who turn out at the polls, the better Democrats do in an election, but reiterated that protecting voters’ rights has nothing to do with party affiliation.

“The bottom line for our entire effort here in Maine and across the country is that we’re going to promote and protect the right to vote,” Derris said. “Everyone who goes to the polls in Maine on Election Day will be able to vote.”