Election officials try to ease long voting lines

[October 23, 2008]  MIAMI (AP) -- Unprecedented numbers of early voters in Florida and other southern states are prompting election officials to add equipment, extend schedules and hand out water and chairs to make people comfortable as they wait for hours to cast their ballots.

About 150,000 people cast ballots Monday and Tuesday, the first two days of early voting in Florida. The crowds are so large that local elections supervisors are increasing the number of key voting components, updating Web sites with wait times and handing out fans and water to people standing in line.

"It doesn't matter if there's lines," 81-year-old Doris Vance, a Barack Obama supporter in Pompano Beach, Fla., said Wednesday. "I knew there would be lines, but I don't mind it. The weather is good."

The Sunshine State is again key this election season, with a prize of 27 electoral votes -- 10 percent of the 270 needed to clinch the election. The state's disputed election in 2000 gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and he captured the state in 2004. This year, Republican John McCain and Democrat Obama are locked in a close race.

The excitement of casting a ballot in the presidential race has outweighed the long lines for hundreds of thousands of early voters nationwide, including in several key battleground states like Florida, Ohio and Nevada.

Voters in every state can cast early ballots and results won't be released until Nov. 4. About a third of the entire electorate is expected to vote early this year.

In Georgia, an elderly woman collapsed in the heat on Tuesday while waiting -- but officials say she soon recovered. Early voters there were already double the number in 2004. As of Wednesday, some 825,000 had cast their ballots, about 15 percent of Georgia's registered voters. The state has 15 electoral votes.

And in North Carolina, which also has 15 electoral votes, more than a half-million people have cast ballots, prompting at least one county to add several days to the schedule at a handful of sites.

Miami-Dade County agreed to update its Web site with wait times, added machines that voters use to sign for their ballots and provided chairs for senior citizens at each location.

Some voters have taken to cruising past polling places to see where, and when, the lines are shortest.

"I came on Monday, saw that the lines were really bad," said Yolanda Consuelo Rams, a McCain supporter in Plantation, Fla. "I also drove by on Tuesday and spoke to some people and they said they had been waiting for more than eight hours. When I came by Wednesday I saw that the lines weren't as long, so I thought that this was a great time for me to do it."

Ensuring voting machines are ready for the load also is a priority.

In Jacksonville, Fla., some optical scanning machines flashed a message Monday that the ballots were too large. Officials say they were replaced and voting continued.

In Broward County, each ballot must be printed when the voter checks in. However, Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the supervisor of elections, said each early voting site has only two printers and officials have not been able to get more from the vendor.

"If you can only process four voters at a time, you're bound to wait," she said.

Metro Atlanta polling sites are reporting thousands of voters piling into the centers each day, with two-hour waits in some places. Registrars are urging voters to bring chairs, umbrellas, water -- and something to pass the time.

"Maybe something to read, and a little bit of patience," said Robert Quigley, a Cobb County spokesman.

[Associated Press; By TAMARA LUSH]

Associated Press writers David T. Scott in North Carolina, Greg Bluestein in Georgia, Ron Word in Jacksonville and Damian Grass in Miami contributed to this report.

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