LEWISTON – He’s two years away from voting, but that isn’t keeping Lewiston High School junior Nimal Eames-Scott from politics.

He has volunteered at the downtown Democratic headquarters and he’s a member of the Young Democrats Club at Lewiston High School.

“Our focus has been trying to get people to vote early,” he said. He and others have been going around the school trying to get adults and students who will be 18 by Nov. 4 to vote early.

It’s part of a nationwide push, he said. “It helps both campaigns. You know how they call you?” The campaigns know which people have voted and don’t call them with reminders. “They can focus on those who haven’t,” Eames-Scott said.

With Obama ahead in some polls, “the earlier people vote, the better,” he said. The idea is to encourage them to vote while they’re leaning toward Obama.

An avid Obama supporter, Eames-Scott said he finds his candidate “refreshing.” During the primaries he rooted for Obama because he was not part of the party machine – like Hillary Rodham Clinton. “He wasn’t getting the superdelegate votes.”

He’s “incredibly supportive” of Obama’s policies, Eames-Scott said.

One is Obama’s plan to raise taxes for the rich and cut taxes for the middle class. “Like Joe Biden said, it’s just plain fairness. I’m strongly against McCain’s push for a continuation of Bush’s tax cut for the rich.”

He likes Obama’s health care plan and opposes McCain’s proposal to tax health care benefits. “Studies have shown it’s going to make fewer people insured.”

Eames-Scott is also pleased that Obama has been against the Iraq war from the start, which Eames-Scott also has been. “Most Democrats in Congress were voting for the Iraq war,” he said. On Sept. 11, 2001, Eames-Scott was in the fifth grade living in South Africa. His mother is Bates Professor Elizabeth Eames, who was in Africa with Bates students.

As a fifth-grader, “I was never persuaded by the whole WMD thing,” he said. In South Africa he had two news sources: CNN and Al Jazeera, the Arab television network.

He got two different points of view. Al Jazeera focused on how Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction, he said. When he came back to Lewiston, many questioned his thinking, he said. “I’ve never been a supporter of the Bush Doctrine.”

Eames-Scott comes from two parents who are Obama supporters. His father is an anthropology professor at Columbia. He can’t vote because he’s a citizen of Jamaica. But he’s “incredibly supportive” of Obama, his son said.