With one month to go before Super Tuesday, Mainers can begin voting in the presidential primary, either at home on an absentee ballot or at their local town or city office.

The primary is particularly notable this year for two reasons.

One is a controversial decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows regarding the eligibility of former President Donald Trump. The other is that unenrolled voters will be allowed to participate thanks to a 2022 law change.

In recent days, the Maine Republican Party has emphasized that Trump’s name will appear on Maine ballots and is urging party members to get out and vote as soon as possible.

In December, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol met the definition of insurrection. The Constitution’s 14th Amendment prohibits those who have previously taken the oath of office and engaged in insurrection from holding office again.

But Bellows stayed her decision and Trump appealed. Maine courts declined to weigh-in, leaving it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is set to hear oral arguments in a Colorado case with a similar finding on Thursday.

The bottom line — Trump is on Maine ballots, along with former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Texas pastor and businessman Ryan Binkley and two men who have already dropped out, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

“If Mainers are upset about Shenna Bellows’ anti-democratic decision to toss a presidential candidate off the ballot, they can send a message by voting early in-person in the presidential primary,” Joel Stetkis, party chairman said in a statement. “All candidates — repeat all candidates, including President Trump — will be on the ballot Feb. 5 when early in-person voting begins.”

And although state law calls for the use of ranked choice voting, Stetkis alerted party members on Friday that the GOP is not using the ranked choice system. Instead, they will count only the votes marked in the first column on the ballot.

On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips are on the ballot.

Portland City Clerk Ashley Rand said Monday that unenrolled voters can choose to vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries without having to enroll as a party member.

“They do not have to enroll in a party,” she said. “They get to pick.”

However, if someone is enrolled in the No Labels Party, Green Independent or Libertarian parties, they are not eligible to vote in the primaries.

She said she did not have a sense of how many of the state’s 273,298 unenrolled voters will choose to participate.

“With this being a state presidential primary, we think that it will be a midsize turnout for an election,” she said.

Portland has private booths set up in the State of Maine room at City Hall for early in-person absentee voting. It’s up to each city and town across the state to decide when or how to set up for voting, although all of them now have statewide ballots available for voters in advance of the March 5 in-person vote.

Enrollment data recently released by the Secretary of State’s Office shows 36% of Mainers are Democrats, 29.5% are Republican and 28.8% are unenrolled.

In total, about 83% of Mainers who are eligible to register to vote have done so, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Looking toward Super Tuesday, when Maine is one of 15 states to weigh-in on the presidential race, Rand said Portland will be ready with 11 polling places across the city.

Until then, voters can come to city hall 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Early voting ends statewide Feb. 29.

Down the road in South Portland, voters in part of the city will choose a new state representative following the October death of Rep. Lois Galgay Reckitt, a Democrat.

Voters will choose from Democrat Matthew Beck, unenrolled candidate Tristram Howard and unenrolled candidate Brendan Williams.