It’s that time of year again, when Maine voters who serve in the military, who are living overseas or who just want the convenience of voting early can request an absentee ballot. This year requests for absentee ballots are on pace to top the number in the presidential contest of four years ago and according to reports, more Democrats are requesting them than Republicans.
In the 2012 election nearly 188,000 absentee ballots were cast, but election officials say this year the number could be even higher than that. They also say Democrats are doing a good job of getting their party members to request them. In 2012, Democrats requested just over 40% of the mailed ballots compared to 25% for Republicans. So far this year Democrats have requested 51% of the mailed ballots, compared to about 22% for Republicans.
Jim Melcher, a political science professor at University of Maine at Farmington says that’s good news for Democrats.
“Democrats have always put more emphasis upon early voting as part of their electoral strategy but the fact that they are ahead of where they have been in previous years is certainly a sign of enthusiasm among Democrats,” says Melcher.
But he says more requests for ballots by Democrats does not necessarily mean more political victories for Democrats. Mainers are well known for voting for the candidate, not necessarily the party. Republicans are also requesting ballots at a higher level than four years ago.
University of New England Political Science Professor Brian Duff says while the increase in requests is good news for Democrats, this election has already proved to be far from predictable.
“The profoundly unpredictable thing about this election is that Trump’s campaign depends so much on this group of white voters, particularly men, who do not have college degrees,”” Duff says.
A group that does not normally vote in high numbers. So can that group of voters be targeted to request absentee ballots or vote at the polls next month? “Absolutely,” says Social Science Professor James Cook at the University of Maine at Augusta. He studies the interaction of social media and politics.
“Research that has been funded by our own government has been able to figure out pretty well who your friends with even if you don’t share that information on line,” says Cook. “So predictive modeling has escalated to really quite impressive, and perhaps alarming levels.”
With the tight race for president, Maine’s heated contest in the second congressional district and several controversial referenda on the ballot, Secretary of State Matt Dunlap is expecting a record number of absentee ballots this year and a total vote that could set a record.
“Overall turnout of our voting, we could see over 35% of our overall turnout be by absentee this year,” Dunlap says.
That’s around 270,000 voters. Maine always is among the top two or three states for voter participation and with the confluence of candidate races and ballot issues this year, Dunlap says the state could see 900,000 Mainers cast ballots.
