AUGUSTA – Looking past the Super Tuesday voting elsewhere toward their own caucuses next Sunday, Maine Democratic Party officials said over the weekend they had already processed 4,100 absentee ballot requests.

Party organizers said Democrats in 420 towns will caucus with gatherings scheduled for 372 different locations.

“This is an unprecedented level of local enthusiasm and is representative of the Democratic Party’s broad appeal,” the Democratic Party’s executive director, Arden Manning, said in a statement.

Absentee ballots must be returned by 5 p.m. Wednesday in order to be counted, officials said. The chance to organize voting by people unable or unwilling to attend a caucus presents an opportunity to a campaign with good contact lists and a field operation.

Unlike Maine Republicans, state Democrats bill their caucuses as a binding event in the party’s delegate selection procedure.

Democrats apportion state convention delegates according to candidate showings in presidential voting at the caucuses, and Manning says people who are elected at the caucuses as state delegates are bound under party rules to support the candidates elected at the caucuses.

State convention delegates select delegates to the national convention set for Aug. 25-28 in Denver. The Democratic National Convention will seat 34 delegates from Maine and award the nomination to the candidate who collects at least 2,025 votes.

Much will have changed by the time Maine Democrats vote, but it is also very possible that much will remain the same.

The two remaining Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, compete in primaries in 15 states as well as caucuses in seven more plus American Samoa on Tuesday. A total of 1,681 delegates is at stake, and the two campaigns have said they do not expect either side to emerge with a lock on the nomination.

Mitt Romney’s victory in the Maine Republican caucuses drew scorn from Manning in his Democratic response, but Manning had almost kind things to say about one of the GOP also-rans, maverick Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who came in third.

“I think that Rep. Paul’s strong level of support demonstrates that many Republicans now doubt the justifications for the war in Iraq and are looking for a candidate to end the conflict,” Manning said in a statement, adding that he believes many Republicans who oppose the war will end up supporting Democratic candidates.

The run-up to New Hampshire’s primary voting brought full rosters of candidates from both parties to Maine’s next-door neighbor with plenty of media spillover but not much in-the-flesh presence on the Maine side.

On Monday, most of the top contenders for a party nomination again will be nearby, campaigning in Massachusetts.