Signs from Madison that Tuesday could be Wisconsin's most frenetic Election Day yet:

A record number of voters have registered in the city: 184,096 as of Friday, including more than 32,000 since April.

The city clerk has processed up to 1,000 requests for absentee ballots a day. The deadline for filing the ballots is Tuesday. As late as last week, hundreds of voters reported they still hadn't received them, although all requested ballots have been mailed.

More than 1,000 voter registration cards mistakenly filed with the city clerk's office have had to be redirected to the correct municipality.

A record number of people -- 26,428 as of Friday morning -- have already voted by absentee ballot. Those votes still have to be tabulated on Election Day.

Some voters found themselves knocked off the rolls for the September primary by clerks using a new statewide voter registration system. The state's top election official acknowledges it will likely happen again next week. Experts say despite the glitches, Wisconsin's election system is sound.

"It's not perfect, but it's not perfect anywhere," Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor who studies voting, said of the state's election system. "But that's American democracy. It's a little messy."

Record-setting?

State elections officials expect a record 3.2 million votes will be cast statewide Tuesday, driven in part by the historic nature of the contest.

It will be like "Christmas and Easter at church (with) people coming out of the woodwork to vote," said Monona city clerk Joan Andrusz.

Democrat Barack Obama would become the country's first African-American president if elected, while a victory by Republican John McCain would usher in the nation's first female vice president, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Also at stake in Wisconsin is control of the state Legislature, the state's eight U.S. House seats, and scores of school and municipal referendums.

The vote comes as state and local elections officials implement a new statewide voter registration system, which is intended to standardize registrations and weed out fraud but has also created headaches for clerks and voters.

The system compares information provided on voter registration forms filed since Aug. 6 with state drivers licenses and death and felony records.

Of the 238,190 registrations checked through Oct. 29, 12 percent resulted in information mismatches.

Critics say mismatches could be evidence of potential fraud. But state elections officials said they are mostly the result of typographical errors or names being entered one way in the voter system but another way in transportation records. They've said a registration mismatch isn't a basis to keep voters from the rolls.

Officials: We'll be ready

Despite challenges leading up to Election Day, and the expected record turnout, local elections officials say they'll be ready.

First, a number of people have already voted early, which officials said will somewhat alleviate long lines. State officials are predicting about 15 percent of the estimated 3.2 million to vote will have done so.

In Sun Prairie, more than 20 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots. Of about 6,000 registered voters in Monona, 1,113 have voted early as of last week, about 19 percent. An estimated 23 percent of Cottage Grove's eligible voters have voted; in DeForest, it was about 34 percent.

Clerks across the area are also staffing polling places like never before.

Madison has lined up 1,850 poll workers to handle the crush of voters Tuesday.

An additional 1,000 workers will be used to file absentee ballots, which must be fed through the tabulator on Election Day just like ballots cast that day. They will also stand in line at various polling places and time how long a voter has to wait, Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said. Places with waits of more than 20 minutes will get an additional poll worker, she said.

Other workers will walk the lines registering people who need to do that before they reach the poll books, Witzel-Behl said.

State Journal reporters Ken Singletary and Gena Kittner contributed to this story.