CLEVELAND -- Big crowds greeted voters Tuesday in Ohio, where a record 80 percent turnout is possible in a swing state that had presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama running neck and neck.
No major problems were reported but in Montgomery County, which includes Dayton, so many people chose to use paper ballots instead of touch-screen machines that it may hold up the county's vote count until Wednesday, officials said.
Overall, voting was brisk and orderly around the state, said Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat elected two years ago on a pledge to improve Ohio's much-maligned voting system.
Long lines were expected despite about 1.5 million people taking advantage of early voting. The maximum wait time to vote Tuesday was one hour, mostly in precincts with large numbers of voters, Brunner said.
"This is like a piece of cake," said Donna Bowman, 63, a retired judge from Franklin County who voted for McCain. "The last presidential election the lines stretched several hundred yards and it took hours to vote."
Other scattered problems around the state included voting machines that weren't set up correctly and poll workers who didn't hand out complete ballots.
In Columbus, the Ohio Republican Party filed a complaint asking a federal judge to require that provisional ballots be verified and counted the same way statewide.
Republicans said they are concerned provisional ballots will be handled differently. Provisional ballots are those cast by voters whose registration has been questioned. The ballots are held for 10 days while elections workers check voter eligibility before they are counted.
Republicans said Brunner had issued "vague and confusing instructions" on handling provisional ballots and "actually seemed to encourage local officials to overlook non-matching signatures" of voters.
Brunner called the GOP legal action partisan and troubling.
"While Ohioans are voting with confidence in record numbers, partisan attempts to re-litigate issues that have been decided by the Ohio Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court are troubling," she said.
In reliably Democratic Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, which has a history of election problems, the voting went smoothly, said elections director Jane Platten. Problems with fewer than 25 vote scanners were quickly fixed, she said.
Platten said three polling places opened as much as 10 minutes late, but no voters were turned away. She also said about 2 percent of the county's 8,599 poll workers failed to show up for work, but that was better than a 20 percent no-show in recent elections.
In addition, she said a couple of precincts mistakenly handed out only one page of a two-page ballot, but the problem was fixed. The half-ballot problem also was reported in Canton, where the elections board sent crews out to remind poll workers to provide both pages.
In Knox County northeast of Columbus, one precinct's three voting machines were taking presidential votes for independent Ralph Nader but no other candidates. The machines were reset and back in operation by 9:30 a.m.
Wariness by voters determined to wait out polling-place problems may have contributed to early lines in the morning. In Cleveland, Shanna Sheline, 30, a dance instructor and office assistant, said she wasn't taking any chances and set aside the whole day to vote if she encountered long lines or other problems.
Franklin County, which includes Columbus, had some jammed paper problems early in the day but nothing major or systemic said elections spokesman Ben Piscitelli.
Shannon Friebel, 22, a senior biophysics major at Ohio State University who voted in his first presidential election, said the process was smooth.
"It was very simple. Short lines, and there were plenty of machines to use," he said.
In Westlake, an upscale suburb west of Cleveland, there appeared to be confusion among voters, some of whom were seeing for the first time the return of old-fashioned paper ballots that replaced touch-screen voting machines used for the March primary.
The paper ballots require voters to choose a candidate by filling in an oval. After finishing, the ballot is scanned to alert the voter to disqualifying duplicate votes for one office. If that happens, the voter can ask for a replacement ballot.
Cuyahoga County is one of 35 Ohio counties where voters cast ballots on paper. The other 53 counties use touch-screen machines.
Bush won by about 118,000 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast in Ohio. Sen. John Kerry conceded the day after the election, convinced he would not receive enough votes when provisional ballots were counted.
Ohio made changes this year, including putting more voting machines in precincts that are expected to be the busiest. Franklin County has about twice as many touch-screen voting machines this year as it did in 2004.
