Requests for absentee ballots in next Tuesday’s special U.S. Senate election have slipped 22% from the January 2010 special election, the Boston Globe reports.

Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office said he was “extremely concerned” about the level of voter participation in the race between Ed Markey (D) and Gabriel Gomez (R).

“He’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.”

— Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), quoted by the Bangor Daily News, on Democratic rival Troy Jackson (D) who he said has a “black heart” and should go back in the woods “and let someone with a brain come down here and do some good work.”

Jon Meacham: “Those who think that ‘Bush Fatigue’ is preemptively fatal to Jeb’s chances may be underestimating the American affinity for brand names.”

“The speculation about a Bush bid in 2016 tells us a lot about one of the handful of truly influential American families and more than a little bit about the country that family has helped shape. Jeb long ago internalized and then lived out his family’s guiding precepts. Bushes move to new parts of the country; they work hard; they learn from their mistakes, particularly from failed campaigns; and they never, ever give up… the Bushes aren’t kings; in management speak, they’re a line of related products that most Americans recognize and have chosen on three (1988, 2000 and 2004) of the four occasions they’ve been on offer.”

“It’s possible that the choice will come down to the Bushes and another familiar American product: the Clintons. Perhaps the two clans will soon join Lancashire and York, Gladstone and Disraeli, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and the Yankees and the Red Sox as one of history’s great rivalries.”

The New York Times magazine has a must-read piece on the Obama re-election campaign’s digital team and how they’re now cashing in on their experience.

“Political marketing has usually lagged behind commercial marketing. Companies that spend billions of dollars a year developing ways to make many more billions of dollars a year tend to have little to learn from presidential campaigns, which are generally start-ups aimed at a one-day sale. But the (re)selling of the president, 2012, was an entirely different matter. The campaign recruited the best young minds in the booming fields of analytics and behavioral science and placed them in a room they called ‘the cave’ for up to 16 hours a day over the course of roughly 16 months. After the election, when the technology wizards finally came out, they had not only helped produce a victory that defied a couple of historical predictors; they also developed a host of highly effective marketing techniques that were either entirely new or had never been tried on such a grand scale.”

“I was having a look around to see how bad it would be to live there. And I concluded it was really bad to live there — traffic is bad, weather is worse. Most of the people you talk to are frauds. You know.”

— Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), in an interview with Roll Call, as he mulls a U.S. Senate bid.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said he would make a decision to run again for governor before July 1, Bloomberg reports.

He added: “Later in the year, if there’s more expansive plans than that we’ll announce at the appropriate time.”