LEWISTON – By 5 p.m., it was becoming tough to find people who had yet to vote.

Republican volunteer John Sawyer kept phoning anyway, working through a list of names supplied by the city of Auburn and marked up by volunteers at the polls. He dialed again.

“Hello, I’m calling from the Maine Victory Campaign,” he began.

Two voters were away. One was a wrong number. Another was dead.

“Sorry to bother you,” Sawyer said apologetically, placing a check beside the name.

Sometimes, the voter lists are a little old, he explained after he hung up. Over the course of the day, he figured he’d called as many as 300 people.

Sawyer was part of an unprecedented machine of Election Day volunteers, all aimed at getting out the vote.

Both Democrats and Republicans sent observers to polling places throughout Androscoggin County Tuesday.

At each site, party observers arrived with bound lists of the voters in their assigned areas. As voters checked in and were given their ballots, the party operatives checked off the names.

Runners from campaign headquarters in downtown Lewiston then fetched the marked-up lists every couple of hours.

The result: People who didn’t vote probably got a phone call.

“We’ve been working on this system for two to three years,” said Andrew Simon, field coordinator at Lewiston’s Republican Party office.

More than 100 volunteers worked through the office on Tuesday, Simon said.

They included observers at polling places and people knocking on doors, waving signs on busy streets and talking on the phones.

At Auburn City Hall, two observers from each party monitored the steady voter traffic.

Republican volunteer Jim Walker sat beside Democratic volunteer Margaret Savignano. Few voters asked them what they were doing or why, they said.

The added observers were not a problem, officials in Lewiston and Auburn said. The party workers had a right to be there, as long as they didn’t get in the way, Lewiston City Clerk Kathy Montejo said.

They stayed until 6 p.m., two hours before the polls closed. There was no point in staying later. They needed to call while there was still time to vote.

Those calls were exhausting, said Sawyer, who had memorized his remarks, asking people if they had voted for the president and congressional candidate Brian Hamel.

If they hadn’t, he would offer them a ride.

Grass roots is all about getting people to the polls, Simon said.