Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts in Tuesday's U.S. elections, delaying voters in several states and forcing some to use paper ballots instead.

In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they could not get to start properly until about 10 minutes after polls opened.

More troubling problems arose in Virginia, where the FBI is investigating complaints about attempts to intimidate voters amid the hard-fought U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. George Allen and Democratic challenger Jim Webb, the State Board of Elections said Tuesday.

Colorado Democratic Party officials said they would ask a state judge to extend voting by two hours Tuesday night because of long lines at polling places due to scattered computer problems and a long ballot with many choices. At one ballot box, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter waited an hour and 40 minutes to vote.

Power failures slowed voting at some Denver locations, Denver Election Commission spokesperson Alton Dillard said, as laptop computers used to verify voter registration were knocked out, forcing workers to call the central office for the information.

In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers did not know how to run the machines, said County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler.

Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., extended voting hours because voters initially could not cast ballots in 75 precincts.

Pennsylvania's Lebanon County also extended polling hours because a programming error forced some voters to cast paper ballots.

With a third of Americans voting on new equipment and voters navigating new registration databases and changed ID rules, activist groups had been worried about polling problems even before Election Day.

"This is largely what I expected," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan group that tracks voting changes. "With as much change as we had, expecting things to go absolutely smoothly at the beginning of the day is too optimistic."

Electronic ballots got mixed up at some precincts in Broward County, Fla., and in Utah County, Utah, workers failed to properly encode cards that voters use to bring up touchscreen ballots.

But voting-equipment companies said they had not seen anything beyond the norm and blamed the problems largely on human error.

"Any time there's more exposure to equipment, there are questions about setting up the equipment and things like that," said Ken Fields, a spokesperson for Election Systems & Software Inc. "Overall, things are going very well."

Some voters even said they liked the new ballots.

"It was much clearer on what you were voting for and you made sure you absolutely were voting for what you wanted to vote for," said Cathy Schaefer, 59, of Cincinnati.

Though at least one political candidate also had trouble casting his ballot at a polling station, he could not blame the voting machine. Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, was initially turned away from the ballot box because he forgot his voter's registration card, but he returned later with a new card to cast his vote.

Other problems also had nothing to do with machines. In North Carolina about 100 voters waited nearly an hour at a church because the person with the key did not show up. In Kentucky's Bourbon County—famous for its whiskey—a school-board race had been left off some ballots, requiring the county clerk to make up paper ballots on the spot.

Although voter turnout generally is lower in midterm elections—when the presidency is not at stake—trouble had been expected because this year was the deadline for many of the election changes enacted after the Florida balloting chaos of 2000.

Under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, states have replaced outdated voting equipment, established statewide voter-registration databases, required better voter identification and arranged for provisional ballots should something go wrong.

Control of Congress is also at stake this year, and because individual congressional races are generally decided by fewer votes than presidential contests, any problems at the polls are more likely to affect the outcome.

According to Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm, 32 percent of registered voters were using equipment added since the 2004 elections.

Although not required by federal law, some states passed new voter-identification requirements. While courts struck down photo-ID requirements in several states, Missouri's chief elections official, Robin Carnahan, said she was still asked three times to show a photo ID, despite a court ruling striking the requirement down in that Midwest state. (AP)

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