Rains fail to dampen flood of voters

Record numbers of voters stood in long lines to cast ballots yesterday, undeterred by cold, rain, flood warnings or even, in some cases, the 8 p.m. close of polls.

Scores of attorneys and poll watchers gave the voting unprecedented scrutiny. At the Ballard Oddfellow's hall, poll workers had to ask the lawyers and monitors to stop blocking registration tables.

"Sometimes there are more of those people than there are voters," said Jean Olson, a veteran poll worker.

Yet through it all, few glitches were reported.

King County elections officials responded to an unexpected demand for provisional ballots. Some Snohomish County voters were confronted by malfunctioning voting machines. Port Townsend poll workers asked voters to show identification before election officials put a stop to it.

But while hundreds of partisan lawyers and poll watchers kept an eye out for dirty voting practices across the state, the only dirt most voters experienced was the mud on their shoes.

"This isn't ground zero," said Bill Lee, a Boston lawyer who led the Democrats' voting protection effort in Washington.

Still, an unexpected surge in so-called provisional ballots — which allow voters to vote at precincts outside their normal polling places — raised questions at the Bush/Cheney campaign. King County elections officials expected no more than 25,000 provisional ballots, then rushed 80,000 more provisional-ballot envelopes to the field.

"We don't know yet if it's going to be a problem or not," said Leah Yoon, a campaign spokeswoman.

In King County, elections supervisor Dean Logan said the surge in provisional ballots means "we've got our work cut out in the next 15-day period."

In a close race, the high number of provisional ballots could delay a final count because election workers must determine the eligibility of each voter before his or her vote is counted.

While Washington is not seen as a swing state in the presidential election, the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry fueled a surge in voter registrations statewide.

Secretary of State Sam Reed, himself in a re-election race, predicted state turnout at 84 percent, the highest since Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat Thomas Dewey in the 1944 election. King County election officials said turnout may have exceeded their prediction of 82 percent.

Few problems reported

More than 600 lawyers representing the Democratic and Republican parties monitored the voting yesterday, but neither party reported many polling-place problems.

Joaquin Avila, a national expert in voting law and visiting law professor at Seattle University, staffed a voter complaint hotline with 25 law students. But by late afternoon, the hotline had received just two calls.

One voter in Sultan reported his vote for Kerry was temporarily credited to Bush before the machine was fixed and the vote correctly counted, according to the hotline.

Snohomish County elections manager Carolyn Diepenbrock said problems were found with about 10 of the county's 1,000 touch-screen voting machines, with technicians fixing calibration problems on the machines as they were reported.

Long lines at polls

In Bellevue, voters were waiting outside the door when John Chadwick arrived to open the polls at the Neighborhood Church on 140th Avenue Northeast. All 13 polling booths were filled at 7:30 a.m. and five other people were standing in line.

"It has been like that since we opened the door," Chadwick said. "I can't remember when I've seen this kind of turnout."

By the day's end, commuters battled an ugly traffic jam on Highway 520 on their way to Eastside polls, many walking in with minutes to spare.

Polling places across the state reported similar turnout, driven by a surge in voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts and interest in the presidential election.

At Bellevue polling locations, Republican supporters scanned lists for registered voters who'd yet voted, then brought the names back to party call centers. The names were matched with GOP voter lists, and workers offered to drive the voters to polls.

"Not everyone understands how much their vote counts until someone calls them," Pierce Scranton, with the state Bush campaign.

At Hawthorne Elementary in South Seattle, Rose Lee, 63, took the day off from running a retail nursery to help Democrats get out the vote. If people need baby-sitters, she said, she can help.

"Inconvenience is a big deterrence for voting," said Lee, a volunteer with MoveOn, a political action committee that had some 2000 people scouring Seattle and the state to mobilize Democrats.

In Seattle's University District, lawyers working for the Democrats were on hand to make sure that University of Washington students, who previously resided out of the state, but now were registered Washington voters, weren't turned away.

Last-minute drama

Slightly out of breath, Phillip and Rachel Brower dashed into their South Snohomish county polling place just moments before the doors closed.

Phillip Brower said he almost didn't vote — when he returned home from his physical-therapy job at 7:30 p.m., his wife was in the shower and it seemed easier to just settle in for the night. But she insisted, he said, and they made it just in time to cast a pair of votes for Bush.

"I feel strongly about the president thing. It's a big election. I feel like everybody is voting Kerry," said Rachel Brower.

Earlier in the day, Colleen Roman, 44, was among the first to vote in her University area polling place.

"It's the first time I've voted this early," she said. "But it's important to get Bush out of office. It's really scary that he would be in office four more years."

Outside the 36th district polling place at Seattle Center at about 8:30 a.m., Dan Burke snapped a picture of Dante Obcena, his colleague, holding a voters pamphlet.

"It's my first time," said Obcena, 25, a native of the Philippines who became a U.S. citizen last year. "I feel like I'm American now."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com.

Seattle Times reporters Susan Kelleher, Diane Brooks, Keith Ervin, Erik Lacitis, Florangela Davila, Sherry Grindeland, Kelly Kearsley, Judy Chia Hui Hsu, Carol Ostrom and Stephanie Dunnewind contributed to this report.