City and state voting officials are girding for a big turnout on Nov. 4, Election Day.

Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap projects that about 85 percent of the state's registered voters will cast ballots. That follows a trend of increasing turnout over the last two elections: 74 percent of eligible Maine voters cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election and in the 2000 presidential election, turnout was 67 percent.

What's good news for democracy isn't entirely good news for the folks who run elections. From Dunlap all the way down to the frontline workers at tiny polling places in East-Back-Of-Beyond, Maine, greater turnout means more work. And the work doesn't just come in one fell swoop; with liberalized rules for casting absentee ballots -- called "No Excuse" absentee voting -- more Mainers are voting in the days, weeks and even months prior to the actual Election Day.

In recent years, Dunlap says that almost one quarter of the ballots cast in Maine have been absentee. An increasing number of people have voted absentee in front of the clerk at their town office on the day before Election Day. That's meant long lines at town offices on the very day that staff are frantically trying to get ready for the real Election Day, which drove town clerks to ask the Legislature this past session for some sort of relief on Nov. 3.

In response, lawmakers said towns can deny voters the opportunity to cast their absentee ballot in front of a clerk on Nov. 3 -- although residents may still vote absentee on that day by coming into the town office, getting the application and ballot and going outside to vote. (They may, however, vote absentee in front of the town clerk on all other days preceding the General Election.)

Town clerks believe this new system for Nov. 3 will diminish the amount of time they will need to spend tending to absentee voters' needs on the day before the election.

We're not so sure.

What is clear, however, is that Maine's balloting system, like that in many states, is still largely a creature of the past century. There are all sorts of new ways to vote, such as Instant Runoff Voting, which guarantees majority winners without having to mount a separate, and second, runoff vote.

Then there's Early Voting, in which registered voters may cast an actual ballot at an approved voting location before the actual Election Day. There are groups, such as the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Pew center on the States, that are looking at voting innovations that can increase turnout as well as the accuracy, convenience and security of balloting.

While Maine's election administrators have begun to investigate and, in some cases, run trials of new ways to vote, many of the improvements being tested elsewhere would, appropriately, require a vote of the Legislature and a change in Maine's constitution.

Gov. John Baldacci could begin that process by appointing a bipartisan commission to investigate and recommend changes to the way Maine conducts elections. The commission should be made up of lawmakers (past and present), representatives of municipal government, voter-access groups such as the League of Women Voters, state election administrators and perhaps even a scholar whose area of expertise is balloting and elections.

Baldacci should then hand the commission its charge: Devise a series of reforms that will create an efficient, easy-to-use and secure voting system that will encourage the maximum number of eligible voters to participate in elections.