Early Voters Mob Fla. Polls

The start of early voting in Florida today brought hordes to polling places, forcing voters to contend with long lines and voting machine failures, the Miami Herald reports. Miami-Dade and Broward counties added a million registered voters each to their rolls this year. The crowds signaled the usefulness of the state’s early voting provision, started in 2002, but the robust turnout still peeved some.

"I think it's ridiculous," said a man who spent 40 minutes in line because of computer problems. "They've had plenty of time to prepare for this, and they should have worked on those machines and made sure they were working yesterday." But many others saw the turnout as heartening, and some said they wouldn't have minded a longer delay. “I would wait 10 hours to vote for Obama,” one fervent supporter said. (More Election 2008 stories.)