Online Absentee Ballot Request Service

Lesley McCaw, InforME

The Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions is pleased to offer an enhanced Absentee Ballot Request service, which allows residents of participating municipalities to submit their absentee ballot requests online. This service was developed in partnership with InforME at no charge to users or the Secretary of State's Office and can be found at: http://www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/AbsenteeBallot/index.pl .

The enhanced service now offers three ways to request an absentee ballot. Option one, a new option in 2008, allows voters who reside in one of the 52 participating municipalities to complete and submit their form online. Option two, allows voters from any municipality in Maine to complete a pre-fillable PDF form, which need only be printed, signed and mailed to their municipal clerk. Option three allows voters to download and print a blank PDF form, fill it out by hand, and mail or deliver it to their municipal clerk.

In the State of Maine, voters don't need a specific reason to receive an absentee ballot; as long as they are registered to vote, they may request an absentee ballot. In fact, in 2007 the 52 municipalities that are participating in the online service had 64,044 absentee ballot requests, representing almost 23% of the registered voters for those towns. The Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions is always looking for ways to increase the total number of voters and allowing voters to request an absentee ballot online is just one way that they are hoping to do that.

For more information on Voting in the State of Maine please visit the CEC website at http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/voter_info/index.html .