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Sen. Susan Collins has never missed a vote in the U.S. Senate during her 11-plus years there. Sen. Olympia Snowe has missed just 19 since 1994.

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Rep. Tom Allen has missed 145 votes during his 11-plus years in Congress, meaning he has participated in 98 percent of House votes.

Remember the student in high school who won an award at graduation because she never missed a day? That child has grown up, and her name is Sen. Susan Collins.

As of March 14, Collins, a Maine Republican, had cast 3,764 roll call votes in a row during more than 11 years in the Senate. She has surpassed one of Maine's political icons, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, also a Republican, who cast 2,941 votes in a row from 1955 to 1968.

Such streaks normally are topics of discussion among only the most ardent political junkies, but Collins is making voting records an issue in her re-election campaign, so Maine voters likely will hear more about attendance.

Collins, who is seeking a third term, has attacked U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, her likely Democratic opponent, in recent stump speeches because he has missed 145 votes during his 11-plus years in Congress, meaning he has participated in 98 percent of House votes.

That "tells you something in terms of commitment," Collins said at a Republican Party dinner last month in Lewiston.

Allen dismissed the comparison. "What matters most," he said, "is not how many votes you cast but how you cast those votes."

Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said the comparison is Collins' "way of saying that she works really hard. It's not a bad argument, it sends a message that she wants to send: That she is there, she is working and she shows up."

At the same time, political observers say that missing votes says little about the substance of a voting record.

"It is not a significant problem unless there is something dealing with a major national issue or something dealing with Maine," said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University.

Maine's congressional delegation is a disciplined group.

Rep. Michael Michaud, a Democrat, has missed just 26 votes – largely because of his absence last year to attend his aunt's funeral – in five years. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican, has missed just 19 votes since she was elected to the Senate in 1994, according to a database at WashingtonPost.com.

"This delegation has worked very hard together for a very long time on a lot of projects," Allen said. "I'm surprised and disappointed that one member would question the work ethic of anyone else."

Allen has missed votes for a range of reasons on a range of issues, including spending bills; procedural votes; resolutions congratulating or condemning different people, groups or countries; and four votes to rename U.S. post offices.

During his current term, Allen has missed 42 votes – 19 in one stretch last year – to campaign and to care for his wife, Diana, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

He has missed 3.2 percent of the votes this term, compared with 4.4 percent for the average congressman, according to the WashingtonPost.com database.

A review of the final vote tallies shows that Allen's attendance would not have altered the outcome of any of the measures.

He recently missed votes on bills to penalize government contractors, to allow the government to provide insurance in the event that a terrorist act inflicts more than $100 billion in damage, and to provide funding for the Department of Agriculture.

The Maine Republican Party criticized Allen's absence during votes last year, only to learn that he was in Bangor for the funeral of a cousin's wife.

In 2005, Allen and 173 of his colleagues were absent when the House convened on Palm Sunday to approve legislation that allowed the parents of Terry Schiavo, a woman who had been in a coma for years, to sue in federal court to stop Schiavo's husband from allowing her doctors to remove her feeding tube.

In July 1999, Allen missed three votes to attend the baseball All-Star game at Fenway Park, and three votes to speak at a health care conference at Colby...