ID Rules, Machines Frustrate Early Voters

Early morning voters use electronic voting machines to cast their ballots Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006 at Grace Baptist Church in Cedarville, Ohio. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato) (Kiichiro Sato - AP)

-- Election Day was tainted by complaints of dirty tricks, with some voters reporting intimidating phone calls, misleading sample ballots and an armed man questioning Hispanic voters outside a precinct.

Nonetheless, poll watchers said voting across American went relatively well despite long lines in Denver, a Democratic lawsuit in Ohio and a longshot Texas candidate who briefly, and incorrectly, was shown with a wide margin.

"For 7,800 jurisdictions in this country, it looked like things came out pretty cotton-pickin' well," said Doug Lewis, executive director of Election Center, an nonpartisan organization of state election officials. "There were some problems, in some states, but overall it looks like all the predictions of disaster turned out wrong."

As polls closed nationwide, one of the worst waits was in Denver, where hundreds waited long past sunset at beseiged polling centers. They continued to wait, 90 minutes after the 7 p.m. close of voting. It was a miserable end to a day fraught with new voting machine problems and the longest statewide ballot in decades.

"This is positively ridiculous," said Jack McCroskey, who leaned on a cane while waiting to vote. "At 82, I don't deserve to have to stand out here."

Voter intimidation accusations prompted others to claim that some voters were bullied from getting a chance to vote.

In Virginia, where a Republican George Allen battled Democrat Jim Webb in a race too close to call, the FBI was looking at intimidation complaints from voters who reported they received calls telling them to stay home on Election Day, or face criminal charges.

In Indiana, the FBI was investigating allegations that a Democratic volunteer in the college town of Bloomington was found to have absentee ballots after counting had begun.

Other states reported similar problems.

In Arizona, three men, one of them armed, stopped and questioned Hispanic voters outside a Tucson precinct, according to voting monitors for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which photographed the incidents and reported them to the FBI.

In Maryland, sample ballots suggesting Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael Steele were Democrats were distributed by people bused in from out of state. Democrats outnumber Republicans in Maryland by nearly 2-to-1.

An Ehrlich spokeswoman said the fliers were meant to show the candidates had the support of some state Democrats. They were paid for by the campaigns of Ehrlich, Steel and the GOP. Some of the fliers include pictures of Ehrlich with Democrat Kweisi Mfume, a former NAACP president.