Voters wait hours to cast ballots

Lines stretched around buildings and down city blocks as people waited hours to cast ballots in the historic presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Some touch-screen machines briefly malfunctioned, but the country's election system seemed to run smoothly.

The biggest trouble was big crowds. But folks seemed to take it in stride. University students in Florida were prepared to wait hours after polls closed and massive lines remained.

"What's keeping me here? America needs a change, said 18-year-old Lauren Feronti at the University of Central Florida in Orlando." We need to get the right people in office."

In Maryland, Sen. Benjamin Cardin was heartened after visiting a polling precinct. "People are happy and smiling," he said. "People are very anxious to be voting. They really think they are part of history, and they are."

Early voting before Election Day, which drew record crowds in key battleground states, appeared to ease polling pressures on Tuesday. Despite long lines, polls in Ohio -- which suffered delayed tallies in 2004 because of malfunctioning machines and huge crowds -- closed without incident -- or lawsuits.

In hotly contested Pennsylvania, polls also closed with no apparent problems. Earlier Tuesday, a judge dismissed an NAACP lawsuit that sought to force Philadelphia County elections officials to count emergency paper ballots past closing time. Voting officials said they plan to count those ballots Friday.

Some New Jersey voters were forced to cast paper ballots because of troublesome touch-screen machines. Similar problems popped up elsewhere, but were more sporadic than widespread.

"The majority of them seem to be functioning OK, but there are trouble spots, not unexpected," said Purdue University computer science professor Eugene Spafford, who was watching machine voting issues for the Association of Computing Machinery. "The troubles largely stem from issues of volume, undertraining of personnel and, to some extent, inexperience or unanticipated problems."

In New York City, actor Tim Robbins, an ardent Obama supporter, experienced his own voting problems. Poll workers told him he was not a registered voter. After waiting hours, he was told to visit the election board office, which confirmed what he knew to be true: He's a registered voter. A judge then issued a court order allowing him to vote, and he did -- at the same location where his trouble began.

In the West, Californians also faced long lines, but voting went smoothly. In Texas, voting before Election Day was credited with easing turnout. There were some hourlong waits and traffic was steady, but voting officials reported few problems. During that state's primary earlier this year, long lines stretched for hours and ballots ran out.

"It's amazing," said Jacque Callanen, elections administrator for Bexar County, home to San Antonio. "There's happy people out there."

Still, voting advocates had worried -- tolerant voters or not -- that the nation's myriad election systems might stagger later in the day, when people getting off work hit the polls.

"People have to wait for hours. Some people can do that. Some people can't. This is not the way to run a democracy," said Tova Wang of the government watchdog group Common Cause.