Almost 34,000 North Dakotans have received absentee ballots for next month's general election, and more than 2,300 people have already marked them, Secretary of State Al Jaeger said.

A newly created central voter database allows for statewide record keeping of when absentee ballots are sent to voters, and when the finished ballot is returned, Jaeger said Friday. Ballots for the Nov. 4 election have been available since Sept. 25.

"All we're doing is … taking information that was public before, and having it centralized in one location," Jaeger said. "That's why we are able to track it now, where we couldn't do that before."

Associated Press

In November 2004, of the 316,049 people who voted, 51,116 did so before Election Day, which represented 16.2 percent of the turnout.

As of Thursday, county auditors had issued 33,654 absentee ballots, Jaeger said. Several counties are also setting up precincts to allow residents to vote early, a process that requires less paperwork than requesting an absentee ballot.

North Dakota's Democratic and Republican political parties are encouraging their supporters to vote early, and are keeping close track of absentee ballot applications, Jaeger said.