Voting Appears Robust Across D.C. Area

"That's pretty darn high for a non-presidential year," Lindberg said. "It could end up being a record."

Alexandria's registrar, Tom Parkins, said residents have been calling in all day to check their eligibility to vote. Coupled with a higher number of provisional ballots being cast in this election, he said he believed they'd see a substantially larger turnout than the gubernatorial election just a year ago.

"This tells me that even voters who don't watch things real close and don't keep their voter registration up to date somehow have been highly motivated in this election," Parkins said.

Deborah Taylor, registrar for the City of Falls Church, described the voter turnout as "incredibly heavy" causing the city to run out of "I voted" stickers.

"It looks like its been like this statewide," Taylor said. "Everyone is saying it's like a presidential election."

Throughout Northern Virginia, poll workers in many precincts said turnout was more akin to a presidential election than a congressional midterm contest. More than 460 people had cast ballots at a Rosslyn fire station by 9 a.m., and people waited in line for more than an hour to vote in nearby Shirlington, Fairlington and Abingdon, Democratic Party circuit chair Kevin Appel said. In fast-growing Loudoun County, about 340 people had voted by 8 a.m. at Ashburn's Farmwell Station Middle School, with the vast majority opting for paper, rather than electronic, voting machines.

While most of those interviewed at Farmwell Station said they were supporting Webb in the Senate race, often because of frustration with U.S. policy in Iraq, there was substantial support for Allen as well.

Bob Baker Jr., a systems architect, said he voted for Allen because he trusts him and believes he has done a good job in the Senate so far. "The whole thing about Iraq is very unfortunate," Baker, 44, said. "Mistakes were made, unfortunately. But I don't think you can fault anybody for that."

In the Chapel precinct in Annandale -- a Fairfax precinct that went for Bush in 2004 but Gov. Timothy Kaine (D) in 2005, and where Webb must poll well if he is to win -- voter sentiment was decidedly split.

"I really don't want my taxes raised. I'm having a hard enough time making it in Fairfax," said Allen supporter Anne Harrell, 39.

"The economy is doing well. You listen to the numbers, and they're pretty darn good," Harrell said, as she loaded her 2-year-old son into his car seat in her minivan. "It's the money that's driving me."

In Virginia, a dispute arose over the color of the sample ballots being handed out by Democratic volunteers at polls in the 10th Congressional District straddling Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

Republican volunteers charged that the Democrats' sample ballots violated a new state rule against white or yellow sample ballots at polls -- a rule created to avoid confusion between partisan sample ballots and the ones mailed out to voters by local election boards.

Democrats defended their sample ballots, saying they were not yellow but "goldenrod," a shade that was specifically allowed as part of the "no white or yellow" rule. But Fairfax election workers sided with the Republicans and told Democrats to stop handing out the ballots, said Maggie Luca, secretary of the Fairfax electoral board. Democrats rushed to make new copies with a different color and distribute them to precincts.

Jan O'Dell, 68, who voted this morning at Great Falls elementary school, said she was told she'd be arrested if she brought the goldenrod sample ballot into the voting booth with her.

"It's my right, wrong color or not, to be able to look at both sides and not be threatened when I enter a voting place," O'Dell said. "That's intimidation. It worked on the people in front and behind me in line, but not on me." O'Dell said she brought the sample ballot into the voting booth with her.

In the heavily Democratic areas of Arlington and Alexandria, voters overwhelmingly said they would vote for Webb over Allen. "The reason I voted Democrat this time is two words: neuter Bush," said Mark Early, 46, a political independent. He said Republican leaders "are wrong on everything -- the environment, stem cells, the war."

Yacob Gessesse, a 37-year-old lawyer, said he voted for Allen in his first Senate campaign but changed his mind because of the senator's support for the Iraq war and the controversy over his use of the word ethnically derogatory term "macaca" to refer to a Webb campaign worker.

"The main thing that raised my eyebrow was his denial," said Gessesse, an immigrant from Ethiopia. "He said he didn't do it purposefully, so there must be something deep inside of him. It brought out a racist and anti-immigrant side of him."

He and other immigrants at the precinct said they supported the marriage amendment, which Allen has endorsed, because they felt it fit with their religious or cultural beliefs.

In Alexandria's Rosemont neighborhood, lines of voters stretched outside the building at Maury Elementary School. Brad Strickland, 47, said he voted against the marriage amendment, calling it "an economic loss for Virginia."

"The state should not be involved," Strickland said. "Virginia will lose residents if it's passed."

Staff writers Lori Aratani, Cameron Barr, Rosalind S. Helderman, Steve Hendrix, Ernesto Londono, Alec MacGillis, Emily Messner, Leef Smith, Sandhya Somashekhar and Ian Shapira contributed to this report.