MERCER COUNTY — Absentee ballots in Mercer County are tracking almost 1,000 behind what they were in the last presidential election, according to Jeff Greenburg, director of elections.

The deadline for applying for an absentee ballot was Tuesday and all ballots must be returned to the election office by 5 p.m. Friday, Greenburg said. As of Tuesday afternoon, some 2,200 absentee ballots were cast, and Greenburg said he is aware of 3,000 applications.

In the 2008 presidential election, Mercer County counted 3,300 absentee ballots. Those residents who will not be in their precinct on Election Day can vote by absentee ballot, he said. That often includes residents serving in the military or living overseas and those who cannot get to the polls for health or other reasons, he added.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Gov. Tom Corbett extended the absentee ballot deadline for some counties, but Mercer County is not one of them. That applied, Greenburg said, to counties whose offices were closed due to the storm.

One caveat, however, that applies only to a presidential election, is that absentee ballots that arrive after Friday’s deadline can still be counted, as long as they are cast by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Greenburg said. “That gives a little bit of wiggle room. We will hand count those ballots and that is only for a presidential election,” he said.

Greenburg said he isn’t sure why the number of absentee ballots has dropped. “Someone mentioned to me that maybe the economy had something to do with it. Maybe some of our residents who traveled south for the winter may not have been able to afford that. Some may not have the money to maintain two homes. So I don’t know if that had an impact or not,” he said.

The voter rolls show 75,000 registered voters for the 2012 election and 81,000 in the 2008 election. “I don’t know if the decrease in absentee ballots is a reflection of the overall decrease,” Greenburg said.

Nationally, word is spreading that an affiliate of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, will be sending dozens of delegates to monitor the presidential and congressional elections, particularly in states with stringent voter ID laws.

The states most likely to have observers include Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida and Texas, according to Hilary Shelton, the senior vice president for policy and advocacy with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose organization sent a letter to the head of the monitoring team, urging that inspectors deploy monitors to states where “restrictions on voting have been most extensive.”

Greenburg said he has not been notified of any inspectors wishing to monitor county polling sites but if they have the legal paperwork required, they are more than welcome. “I don’t think our county is on the radar. I would expect they would be looking at larger places like Philadelphia and maybe Pittsburgh, but if notified, we can certainly accommodate them.”

While social media sites buzz with complaints about automated calls about the election, Greenburg said his office has had only a few complaints. The only complaint he is concerned about, he said, involved an elderly woman living in a nursing home.

“The care facility called me on her behalf and said she got a call from someone identifying themselves as being from the election board. She had voted by absentee ballot and said the person demanded to know who she voted for and told her if it wasn’t for the ‘right’ party her ballot would be torn up,” Greenburg said.

He declined to say which political party the caller wanted her to vote for.

“Obviously she knew that this didn’t make any sense. The election office calling someone and asking who they voted for isn’t anything we would ever, ever do,” he added.

“I encouraged the care facility to try and track down the number of who called and file a complaint with the district attorney, but I don’t think they did,” he said.