ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —  It was only midmorning on the first day of absentee voting, but 200 people had already shown up to cast their ballots at the clerk's office in Bernalillo County, New Mexico's most populous.

"All indications are folks are going to take advantage of early and absentee," County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said Tuesday. "They don't want to wait in line on Election Day."

Toulouse Oliver estimates that up to 75 percent of all votes cast in the county for the Nov. 4 general election will be by absentee or early ballots. About half the county's voters in 2006 voted early or absentee.

Nationwide, about a third of the electorate is expected to vote early this year, thanks to expanded early voting provisions and fewer restrictions on absentee voting, researchers estimate. More than 30 states allow registered voters to cast early ballots.

In northwestern New Mexico, San Juan County Clerk Fran Hanhardt counted 60 people in line waiting to vote as in-person absentee voters at noon. She said the line had been out the door of the office all morning.

"There's lot of excitement about this election, which is good," she said.

There's heightened interest in absentee voting this year because the Democratic and Republican parties sent absentee ballot applications to voters and the secretary of state's office sent a mailing to active voters last month informing them of their options, Toulouse Oliver said.

The Bernalillo County clerk has already received 57,000 applications for absentee ballots. In 2006, the office sent out a total of 60,000 absentee ballots.

Clerks can mail such ballots to voters until Oct. 31.

Generally, voters who ask for an absentee ballot must use it. However, voters who asked for, but did not receive, an absentee ballot also have a way to vote. They can sign an affidavit and cast a special ballot on Election Day. That ballot, however, has to go through a qualification process before it can be counted to make sure the voter did not already vote, Toulouse Oliver said.

Voters who have an absentee ballot also can use it to vote and hand it over on Election Day, but it can be turned in only at the voter's regular polling place or the county clerk's office by the time the polls close.

Early in-person voting at locations other than county clerks' offices in New Mexico begins Oct. 18 and ends Nov. 1.

None of the early votes will be counted until Election Day, and in some states it could take days or weeks to count all absentee ballots.

Tuesday also was the last day to register to vote in the general election. Toulouse Oliver said her office has been processing about 2,000 applications a day, and had about 15,000 still to be verified before the names could go on the voter rolls.

As of Tuesday morning, some 350,053 voters were registered in Bernalillo County. As of last Friday, 63,368 voters were registered in San Juan County.

"We already have more registered voters than we had in 2004 and they're still coming in in the droves," Hanhardt said.

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