Long Lines, Scattered Problems Greet Voters

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at Long Branch Public Library in Silver Spring, Md. (James M. Thresher - The Washington Post)

Voters throughout the Washington area have been standing in long lines at many polling places today, sometimes waiting an hour or two for a chance to vote for president and in many local contests that pollsters and pundits have told them are not likely to be close.

Conditions varied greatly across the District, Maryland and Virginia, depending on how many voting machines were at particular precincts, and on whether some of those machines broke down. In other cases, the wait depended on the time of day or the degree of political activism within a precinct. Sometimes, it was just a matter of last names.

Shortly after the polls opened at 7 a.m. at the Long Branch Library in Silver Spring, the line to vote stretched across the library's wide plaza. By 9:15 a.m., voters could walk right through the door.

At 2 p.m., a D.C. voter said, he was alone at his voting station at 12th and R streets NW.

Another voter said that most of the line at the Key Elementary School in Arlington County was made up of people who had last names ending in L-Z, while no one was in the A-K line.

At another Arlington precinct, at Lee Highway and Lexington Street, poll workers reported the line was halfway down the block when they arrived at 5:40 a.m. for the 6 a.m. opening. By 8:10 a.m., the line was still halfway down the block and some voters waited 50 minutes.

At about 9:30 a.m. at Fairfax County's West Potomac High School, people were waiting for about an hour to vote. Poll workers said some voters were waiting until they got to the touch-screen machines before reading the two constitutional amendments and four Fairfax County bond proposals. They passed out nonpartisan information and pleaded with voters to read up on the ballot questions before they got to the head of the line. People seemed to be a good spirits, despite the wait.

Some scattered problems were reported. At the Crestwood Elementary School in Fairfax County, for example, two of the four touch-screen voting machines malfunctioned and some voters had to wait in line for an hour and a half before the problems were resolved.

Elections officials in Maryland, the District and Virginia had expected a heavy turnout today, based on voter interest signaled by new registrations and requests for absentee ballots. Reports of long lines were noteworthy for a region in which politicians and pundits say the outcome of many contests is predictable, based on party registration and past voting trends.

In the District, polls will be open until 8 p.m. The presidential contest, U.S. House delegate and school board and council seats are on the ballot.

Polls in Maryland also are open until 8 p.m. as voters cast ballots in the presidential election and contests for U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Some local contests and referendum questions also appear on the ballots.

Virginia voters have until 7 p.m. to choose their candidates for president and Congress and decide whether to add two amendments to the state Constitution. Voters in some jurisdictions in Northern Virginia also will vote on local offices and ballot questions.

The voting weather will remain pleasant, forecasters said, with temperatures in the 60s and a mix of sun and clouds.

Whatever candidates they were backing, many voters shared the experience of long lines and crowded parking lots at their polling places.

In the District

D.C. polling places were packed with people on their way to work who had hoped to beat the voting rush this morning.

At 9:30 a.m., the line to cast ballots at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Dupont Circle went down the block and around the corner. People waited an hour or more to vote. "I've never seen it like this," said Kevin Bertram, 33, who has lived near Dupont Circle for four years

"I wasn't early enough," said Jim Dunton, 45, as he patiently stood in line at the church at 8 a.m.

The long lines kept precinct captains busy. "Everything is all right so far," said Jordan Davis, precinct captain at Foundry United. "I'm still alive."

City election officials had scrambled at the last minute to find enough poll workers and volunteers. On Sunday, Sandra Lindsay, who had signed up to volunteer at the polls, got the call to be a precinct captain because of the shortage of workers.

"They didn't really train me," she said of her one-day class on Sunday. Lindsay said she learned the most about the touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines on Monday when she came to Browne Junior High School in Northeast Washington to set up.

In Maryland

Despite the occasional balky touch-screen voting machine, a parking crunch at a precinct in Potomac and queues longer than veteran poll workers have seen in two generations, pleasant spirits and a determination to be heard ruled the day in Montgomery County.

Nancy Dacek, president of the county's Board of Elections and a former member of the County Council, moved around Montgomery starting at 6 a.m. and found only one difficult situation: the delayed start at Daley Elementary School in Germantown, where the touch-screen voting machines didn't work because the wrong computer cards had been sent to the polling place. But poll workers dug out the paper ballots and got people voting until the proper equipment arrived shortly after 9 a.m.

Those who were delayed by the technical problem at Daley were generally good-natured about the problem, but one man angrily announced that "I'm going to get the Board of Elections on this." At which point Dacek stepped over to the man and said, "Here I am."

When the county technician bearing the proper encoder cards for the machines arrived, she was cheered by the waiting crowd. "This will be the only time in your life that you'll be cheered," Dacek told the worker.

Elsewhere, long lines featured not bickering over politics but conversation about good books, the quality of the schools and the sparkling weather. "It's so orderly, I can't believe it," said Vernon Behanna, chief judge at the polling station at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville. "We're seeing old folks who don't generally bother to come out."

Even at the mid-morning lull, the wait was more than 40 minutes at Richard Montgomery. Many places in the county reported that by 10 a.m., they had already surpassed the entire voter count from this year's presidential primary.

At Wootton High School in Rockville, waiting voters chuckled at the juxtaposition of the polling place with a huge billboard for a student theater production of "The Odd Couple." The voting place's chief judge, Stu Kravits, said he had never seen this large a turnout and attributed the increase to a big jump in first-time voters, many of them young.

At Wootton and other locations, poll workers were taken by the large number of independent voters. At Wootton, for example, the 10 a.m. tally showed that 354 Democrats, 144 Republicans and 151 others had voted.

At Potomac United Methodist Church, plans to hold voting in a new parish hall had to be scrapped in the last few days because the building is not yet ready to receive visitors. So voters walked through the church graveyard and voted in the sanctuary, where voting machines were placed on the altar.

"We'd rather not have voting in a church because some people are uncomfortable with it," Dacek said. "But there was no choice on this."

Voters made do, and some couples relished the opportunity to walk hand in hand up the red-carpeted aisle once again. Though poll worker Margaret Vogel said that one man did complain that "I did this once already in my life, I don't want to do it again."

The real crunch is likely to come in the final hour of voting, elections officials said. "There will be 150 people in line at many places at 8 p.m., and that's when tempers will fray," Dacek said. But she assured voters that anyone who is in the queue by 8 p.m. will be permitted to vote, no matter how long it takes. She said the high turnout meant that many polling places probably won't process everyone until 9:30 or 10 p.m., delaying the counting of the vote until later in the evening.

In Virginia

At noon voters were still enduring long waits at the Walter Reed Recreation Center in Arlington. The building -- a double-wide trailer -- is an interim fixture while a new center is being built, and the cramped quarters were felt early in the morning as the two-hour line to vote stretched down the street.

Still, spirits were noticeably high among volunteers and voters alike.

"There have been no complaints what-so-ever" about the long lines, said Democratic Party volunteer Meredith Klinger, 33, as she handed out sample ballots to Columbia precinct voters. "No one has left the line. People have been upbeat and positive. It's all about making your vote count, regardless of what your vote is."

Perhaps no one was more upbeat than John Robinson, who traveled Arlington's streets today in a Mazda SUV less-than-subtly encouraging people to go to the polls.

"Get out!" boomed Robinson, 70, his voice amplified through three gigantic rented speakers attached to top of his car. "Vote! Vote for the Democrats!"

Robinson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in South Arlington, has been inspiring voters via his loudspeakers since 1965. Still, his enthusiasm for the democratic process is palpable.

"America has gone to the dogs," Robinson said. "But we still love it."

At Cora Kelly Recreation Center in Alexandria, lines of voters began snaking out the door and down the block shortly after the polls opened. By 11 a.m., usually a quieter time, the wait to vote on one of the 10 machines in the gymnasium was still running an hour and a half.

Prospective voters in the heavily Democratic area, many of them fanning themselves with sample ballots as they waited in the stuffy corridor, said that in previous presidential elections, they felt their vote didn't really matter. The state of Virginia hasn't voted to send a Democrat to the White House since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. This time, many said, they felt differently.

"I've never in my life seen so many people voting," said Sherry Kelly-Williams, 44, who has voted in every election in Alexandria since she was 18. "It shows that everyone is excited, everyone is participating. And especially as a black woman, that's good to see. We fought so hard for these rights."

A line already snaked down the hallway of Crestwood Elementary School in Springfield, when the polls opened at 6 a.m. Almost immediately, half the touch-screen voting machines went on the fritz.

One wouldn't open, said Sanford Kaiser, assistant precinct chief. A second one mysteriously broke down within 15 minutes. While technicians were called, voters cast ballots on the two machines still operating and precinct workers passed out paper ballots. Facing waits of an hour and a half, some people left without voting, vowing to return later, Kaiser said.

The machines were repaired within one hour, and a fifth one was brought on line. By mid-morning, the lines remained lengthy but kept moving steadily. The average wait dropped to under half an hour.

Despite an acrimonious election season, voters were uniformly civil. People who declined to take sample ballots from the Republican and Democratic party workers passing out literature outside the polls politely identified themselves as members of the opposite party and thanked the workers, anyway.

The Crestwood precinct is a classic swing precinct. It went for Al Gore in 2000, but by only eight votes out of more than 1,500 cast. Several precinct workers said the turnout seemed to be triple what it was four years ago.

Many Republicans and Democrats alike said they had voted in favor of the bond issues. They cited the need for better transportation and neighborhood libraries, and for improvements in the county's parks.

There were many split ballots. Even Democrats said they had voted to return Republican Thomas M. Davis III to Congress.

But it was clear that for a lot of voters, the congressional race and bond issues were secondary to the presidential election. Just a few minutes after casting their ballots, many voters said they could not remember who they had voted for Congress or how they had cast their ballots on the bond issues.

Among those voting for the first time ever was Marcos Araya, 38, a construction worker. Originally from Chile, Araya said he has lived in the U.S. for 20 years and became a citizen last November specifically so he could vote in this election. He cast his first-ever ballot for Kerry.

"We need the change," he said.

Among many voters, the war in Iraq was the dominant issue.

Jeanine Ramos voted for Gore four years ago. But this year, the Federal Express courier voted for Bush.

"I don't think Bush has been given a fair shake with Iraq," said Ramos, 35, adding that all the men in her family have served in the military. "I don't want to think that people are dying for nothing. Bush started it, and he needs to finish it. I think there would be a law saying you can't change presidents in the middle of a war. Turning things over to someone else now would just make it harder."

In heavily Democratic Arlington, headquarters of the president's reelection bid, a liberal partisan and a Bush voter stood side-by-side for an hour and a half to cast their ballots at the Arlington County Fire Training Academy. To get their ballots, they passed an American flag that had been flying above the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 hit on Sept. 11.

Waiting amidst burned out automobile carcasses, Alice Taylor, an editor at an environmental organization, said the football-field-long line at 8:00 a.m. made her feel great.

"I'm here to vote for John Kerry because I think George Bush is destroying the country. I wouldn't miss it for anything," Taylor, 47, said, adding that Bush's environmental record "is probably the least of his sins." On her list of others: "Going into Iraq preemptively, the Patriot Act, trying to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage. It's endless."

There was no visible security at the polling station, and Taylor said that while she was shaken by being so close to the Pentagon when it was attacked in 2001, she remains realistic. "It's not a huge concern of mine, though I think it can happen. I don't think there's a lot the government can do to protect us from that," she said.

Laura McPherson, 35, said she was drawn into the Bush column -- despite passionate disagreements with the president on domestic issues, including social security and abortion rights -- because her close friend is a major in the Marine reserves serving his second tour in Iraq.

"It leaves me very torn," said McPherson, a legal assistant. "I don't think Kerry will stand by our troops who are over there already. . . . We've done this before, in Japan and Germany. Occupation means we're going to be there a little while."

McPherson said she fears conservative Bush appointees to the Supreme Court will "sway the court for 30 years," but she's decided to accept that. "The worst part of this is, tomorrow, there's no way I'm going to be happy with either outcome," she said.

As for the 8th District congressional seat, Taylor and McPherson both said they went with the incumbent.

"I wish we would have gotten an alternative to Jim Moran, but given him or the Republican he's running against, I'd rather have him," Taylor said.

Cleonia Olson, 70, a retired school teacher who lives in Fairfax's Clifton area, sported a bright red blazer and a sparkling rhinestone flag pin for her trip to the polls. The lifelong Republican said her support for Bush came down to faith.

Olson, who is against abortion rights and does not support gay marriage, said the president shares her values.

"I like his morals and his integrity," Olson said. "The moral values of our country come first. When those are in alignment with God he will work with us and help us to protect our country."

At Centreville High School in Fairfax, several voters said they hadn't even given a thought to security when they headed to the polls. A few people said they had noticed a police officer outside, but they weren't sure if he was working or voting.

"It didn't even cross my mind. But maybe if I lived in D.C. in might have," said Jennifer Fish, 44, of Clifton. "I'd heard that security is an issue but I think they have a good handle on it."

Several voters said they had spent much more time pondering the size of crowds at the polls. One woman hoped aloud that her turn would come before she had to take her son to a dentist's appointment. Another said she might slip out to pick up her children from a babysitter and return later in the day to cast her vote.

"This is the worst I've ever seen," said Joanne Chrisinger, 51, of Clifton, adding that she was thrilled that so any of her neighbors chose to vote. "This is amazing. I think it's very uplifting."

Staff writers Marc Fisher, Maria Glod, Hamil R. Harris, Chris L. Jenkins, Theola Labbe, Michael Laris, Carol Morello, Yuki Noguchi, Eugene Robinson, Brigid Schulte, Mary Beth Sheridan, Leef Smith and Scott Vance contributed to this report.