Campaign '08

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Lines stretched around buildings and crossed city blocks as people waited to cast ballots in the historic presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Touchscreen voting machines malfunctioned in some precincts, yet voting Tuesday appeared to go smoothly overall.

The biggest trouble was big crowds. But folks seemed to take it in stride.

"People are happy and smiling," Sen. Benjamin Cardin said as he voted at a Maryland school. "People are very anxious to be voting. They really think they are part of history, and they are."

In The East

• Electronic machine glitches forced some New Jersey voters to cast paper ballots. In New York, eager voters started lining up before dawn, prompting erroneous reports that some precincts weren't opening on time.

• There were major voting problems in Cambridge, Mass. Tuesday morning. Several voters waited in line only to find out their names weren't on the official voting list.

 
Only one registered voter was listed per address, leaving out thousands of others, according to the mayor's office.

Officials said a total of 6,400 Cambridge voters were left off the list, though it's unknown exactly how many were affected by it Tuesday morning because the issue was resolved by 10 a.m.

• A Hollywood polling place was perhaps the only location that reported a serious voting glitch in Tuesday's presidential election, but it was a problem that was corrected by elections officials.
  
  
• However, Keisha Jackson told CBS station WFOR-TV in Miami reporter Liv Davalos at precinct 53 in Hollywood how people waited as long as three hours because a voter verification machine malfunctioned, along with some voting machines.

The Election Protection Coalition, which monitors voting across the country, reported that at David Park Community Center - also in Hollywood - Amendment 3 was printed twice on the ballot. Elections officials also confirmed the problem. About 40 reportedly people received this ballot.  People had at first been told that if they voted in both places, their ballots would not be counted – that's apparently changed.

The Broward Elections office had waiting in the wings about 40 technicians standing by to work on the voter verification machines, and another 12 technical assistance teams equipped to fix any problems that arise with the optical ballot scanners.

• Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell urged voters to "hang in there" as state and country officials braced for a huge turnout in that hotly contested state. More than 160 people were lined up when the polls opened at First Presbyterian Church in Allentown. "I could stay an hour and a half at the front end or three hours at the back end," joked Ronald Marshall, a black Democrat.
  
  
  • The Republican Party is responding to reports of alleged voter intimidation in Philadelphia by members of the Black Panther Party.
  
  Two men, one with a night stick, were caught on tape outside a polling place entrance located at 1221 Fairmount Avenue. The video has since been broadcasted on YouTube.
  
  A lawyer for the GOP was brought in to make sure fair voting practices remained the priority.

The men were asked to move away from the entrance by police, but one returned later in the day.

In The West

• Californians also faced long lines, but voting went smoothly. In Orange County, south of Los Angeles, about 400 people were on hand to treat problems with the county's all-electronic voting system, said Brett Rowley of the registrar's office.

"We've got paper ballots as a backup," he said.

Heavy rain plunged a handful of Los Angeles polling places into the dark, forcing some to move voting booths outside until electricity was restored. Voting didn't stop.

Election officials predicted turnout rates as high as 80 percent in California, the country's most populous state and the highest holder of electoral votes. In Virginia, State Board of Elections executive secretary Nancy Rodrigues said she expected 75 percent of the state's registered voters to cast ballots by Tuesday night.

• Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Colorado Common Cause said her group and another watchdog group, Election Protection, had received about 800 calls from Colorado voters, mostly about registration questions, but nothing major was reported.
  
  "Of course there have been hiccups," Flanagan said.
  
  One hiccup: Provisional ballots were being given out "wholesale" in some counties, including Denver and Arapahoe, at the first sign of trouble with a voter's registration, Flanagan said.
  
  "We think that's problematic," she said. Provisional ballots are counted only after all other ballots are counted and only in instances where they can be verified as legitimate and would affect the outcome of a race.

In The South

• Hundreds converged on polling precincts in Missouri, another crucial battleground state. Norma Storms, a 78-year-old resident of Raytown, said her driveway was filled with cars left by voters who couldn't get into nearby parking lots.

"I have never seen anything like this in all my born days," she said. "I am just astounded."

In some places the wait was longer than two hours.

"Well, I think I feel somehow strong and energized to stand here even without food and water," said Alexandria, Va., resident Ahmed Bowling, facing a very long line. "What matters is to cast my vote."

Some voting advocates worried that -- tolerant voters or no -- the nation's myriad election systems could stagger later in the day, when people getting off work hit the polls.

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

• Late Monday, McCain's campaign sued the Virginia electoral board, trying to force the state to count late-arriving military ballots from overseas. No hearing has been set.

McCain, the Republican candidate and a POW during the Vietnam War, asked a federal judge to order state election officials to count absentee ballots mailed from abroad that arrive as late as Nov. 14.

Lawsuits have become common fodder in election battles. The 2000 recount meltdown in Florida was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.

What is uncommon about Tuesday's contest is the sheer number of voters expected to descend on more than 7,000 election jurisdictions across the country. Voter registration numbers are up 7.3 percent from the last presidential election.

In The Midwest

• Ohio, which experienced extreme voting delays in the last hours of the 2004 election, had some jammed paper problems in Franklin County. "We're taking care of things like that," said elections spokesman Ben Piscitelli. "But there's nothing major or systemic."

• Perhaps the most bizarre barrier to voting was a truck that hit a utility pole in St. Paul, Minn.'s Merriam Park neighborhood. The accident knocked power out for about 90 minutes to two polling locations. Joe Mansky, Ramsey County's elections manager, said voting continued at those sites.

Election judges said the ballots were kept secure at one of the locations until the power was restored and the ballots could be run through an electronic machine, while a backup generator kicked in at the other site.

• A police spokeswoman says two juveniles were cited for disorderly conduct for disrupting a polling place in Milwaukee, Wis.
  
  Police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz says the students were yelling and making threats at people who were voting at South Division High School.
  
  She says she doesn't know the nature of the threats but the two were creating a disturbance. Officers who were called to the scene gave them tickets.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)