AUGUSTA – Maine could well be looking at a record number of new voters in the November elections, judging by informal survey of town and city clerks, as well as interviews with political operatives.

There’s also likely to be a record number of absentee ballots cast, the same people say.

From the state’s largest city to its small towns, clerks say they are getting more voter registration application cards and more requests for absentee ballots than they remember from previous elections.

With nearly a month to go before the election, several municipalities have already tallied 5 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.

Lewiston City Clerk Kathleen Montejo said her staff already has added 417 new voters to the 25,158 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).”

Mechanic Falls Town Clerk Shirley Marquis said more than 50 new registrations have been processed or are being processed with nearly a month left before Election Day. The town started the year with 1,886 registered voters.

Portland has been seeing a heavy increase in new voter registrations.

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

Hundreds of registration cards remain to be processed in Portland, she said, but not all will be new voters. Cohen said that because some will be address changes, and many will be duplicates, she would not venture a guess on the final number of new voter registrations.

In January, Portland had 50,121 registered voters.

Bangor had 17,466. There, City Clerk Patti Dubois said that since Aug. 1, the city 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.”

Statewide, the number of new voters could be the equivalent of adding a couple of counties to the voting list by Election Day, some say.

“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,” he added.

Campaigns at work

The two major parties and their presidential campaigns have significant registration efforts under way. Jesse Derris, a spokesman for the Kerry/Edwards campaign in Maine, said, “We have had a tremendous effort. I will say we have registered in the thousands of new voters.”

Randy Bumps, executive director of the Bush/Cheney Maine campaign, 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 … voters.”

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 that she says has registered more than 12,000 voters. USAction, a national low-income advocacy group, has funded the door-to-door effort. She declined to estimate the cost of the operation, which employs 25 full-time field workers.

“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. Mailings and phone calls to new voters have urged them to cast absentee ballots. Maine law allows people to vote early and does not require a reason for doing so.

“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 their level four years ago.

Despite the reports of increased voter activity, some question how much the final turnout will be affected.

“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 voter turnout of 70.3 percent occurred in the 1992 election year.