By Miranda S. Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

As icy weather descended on the region late yesterday, Maryland gave voters an extra 90 minutes to reach the polls, while Virginia and the District shut down on time.

In Virginia, exit polls estimated that nearly one-third of registered voters turned out yesterday, a state record in a presidential primary. In the District, nearly three times as many voters cast ballots as in the 2004 primary. Maryland officials, meanwhile, projected turnout of about 39 percent, nearly equal to the record set in 1992.

Across the region, precincts ran out of ballots, and there were hour-long waits at many polling places. Late in the day, weather-related road closures left at least some people unable to vote.

Faridon Mohtashemi left work in Crystal City an hour early, then sat in traffic for more than two hours, arriving at Hayfield Secondary school in Fairfax County at 7:03 p.m., three minutes after closing time.

"It's very disheartening that they couldn't extend the hours," said Mohtashemi, who had planned to vote for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

In Maryland, after receiving complaints about road conditions for several hours, the State Board of Elections obtained a court order at 7 p.m., an hour before that state's closing time, to extend voting hours.

Judge Ronald A. Silkworth wrote that he extended the hours "to provide a remedy that is in the public interest and protects the integrity of the electoral process."

Only provisional ballots were cast after 8 p.m., and they will not be counted for a week. Even so, the margins of victory for Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appeared so decisive that uncounted ballots were unlikely to change the outcome. Some local contests, however, might yet hinge on those ballots.

Late yesterday, Maryland's elections board said that some jurisdictions were having difficulty delivering results to central locations because of poor driving conditions. Counting was to resume today.

The extension was welcomed by Ann-Marie Wildman, 43, of Largo. She pulled off the Beltway about 8 p.m., certain that she had missed her chance to vote. An accident on Interstate 395 and slippery roads had delayed her. "And then a couple of minutes later, they extended the hours," she said as she left Largo-Kettering Library after casting her ballot.

The weather was the one thing officials knew was out of their control as they prepared to accommodate yesterday's expected high voter turnout. What they could control, they tried feverishly to manage, juggling sporadic problems with voter registration, occasional machine malfunctions, overflowing parking lots and, in some places, shortages of paper ballots.

In Arlington County, some voters waited two hours. "It's never been this busy in my memory," said John Mazzella, 39, who waited with about 60 people at St. George's Parish Hall.

County officials fielded complaints from irate voters. "We're getting people jumping up and down who are very angry at us and don't think we know what we're doing," said Allen Harrison, chairman of the Arlington County Electoral Board.

In the District, scattered reports of ballot shortages and malfunctioning ballot-reading machines began early and continued into the evening. Bill O'Field, spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, said voter turnout was high compared with past presidential primaries, leading to a ballot shortage. The District is one of the few area jurisdictions that uses scanners to read paper ballots.

O'Field said some scanners jammed after clerks failed to properly tear the stubs before feeding ballots into the machines. Scanners broke down twice at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Capitol Hill, and an auxiliary bin overflowed with ballots that had been cast but not processed. At one point, poll workers stacked cast ballots on top of a piano.

David Pardo, a volunteer poll watcher for the Obama campaign, said: "There's no hint of any wrongdoing. It's just chaos."

At Watkins Elementary School in Capitol Hill, election workers ran out of ballots three times. "We just didn't know we'd have this many people," polling captain Mary Miller said.

District officials struggled to report election results. O'Field said the weather was partly to blame. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) pronounced the slow pace of returns "very disappointing." Of the ballot shortages, neighborhood commissioner Lenwood Johnson said, "Somebody needs to be fired over that."

Most of the region's other jurisdictions rely on touch-screen voting machines, similar to an automated teller machine, and they appeared to work well yesterday. In the District, the touch screens are available as an alternative to the paper and scanner system.

In Montgomery County, where extensive machine malfunctions occurred in the 2006 primary, Kenneth McDowell, an Internet consultant, tried to vote in Bethesda. The electronic voter check-in system at his polling place said, incorrectly, that he had already voted. McDowell, who was given a provisional paper, appeared to be among an unlucky few.