ALICIA CHANG
LOS ANGELES
California voters stood in line Tuesday – and they were proud of it.
Millions of people streamed to the polls to help elect the nation’s first black president or its first woman vice president.
“I’m stoked. This is a historic event,” said Andrew Lind, 28, who wore a green Barack Obama T-shirt under his jacket as he stood in line at an elementary school in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.
Moderate lines were reported early in the day at many polling places around the state. Voters clutched coffee cups to stay warm or tuned into their iPods to pass the time.
Voting officials reported waits of less than an hour. Three Los Angeles area polling locations were moved outside because of apparent power outages caused by light morning rain that later gave way to clear skies.
At a polling place in the San Fernando Valley, voting was slowed when a worker accidentally left vote-recording devices at home and voters had to fill in circles with a pen to designate their choices.
The lines didn’t seem to bother many people.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Patti Negri, who has overseen elections in a Hollywood neighborhood since 1990. People were already lined up when she arrived at 6 a.m.
“Everyone’s in fabulous spirit,” she said. “People are waiting in a long line and are proud of it.”
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama held a hefty lead in state polls over his Republican contender John McCain. Polls showed a close race on statewide ballot measures on parental notification for abortion and gay marriage.
In San Francisco, new U.S. citizen John Gillham, 43, waited 15 minutes to vote for the first time ever in this country at the Third Baptist Church. “I’m voting for the black guy,” the native of England said.
In Hollywood, sisters Geraldine and Melva Denham, who are black, said they took the day off work to travel to polling places and give food to election workers.
“My grandparents paid poll taxes in Texas to vote. It’s emotional,” Melva Denham said.
In downtown Los Angeles, a smooth flow of voters filed into a polling station set up in a 32-story condominium tower. Disney art director Ellen Jin-Over, 35, said she had been a registered Democrat until recently but switched to Republican.
“I don’t like what Obama is presenting as far as expansion of government programs,” she said. “I don’t like McCain either, but he is better than Obama.”
There were no lines at a polling place at a Glendale car dealership, where Ichiro Yoshizawa, 79, a retired toolmaker, said he voted for McCain because his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam would make him a good commander-in-chief.
“That shows me that he loves his country first,” Yoshizawa said.
Jo’Ann DeQuattro said she voted Democrat because she was dismayed by the war in Iraq.
“People say how it’s the economy, I say it was always the war,” DeQuattro said. “Billions of dollars have been spent on this unjust war.”
Voters also had strong feelings about Proposition 8, the state ballot measure that would ban same sex marriage.
John McAndrews, 38, voted against the initiative at the San Francisco church.
“Everybody’s free to love who they want. It shouldn’t matter,” he said.
In Sacramento, Richard Jackson, 56, an in-home caretaker, voted for Proposition 8 because he didn’t want same-sex marriage to be taught in schools.
“In the Bible, it wasn’t Steve and Steve, it was Adam and Eve,” he said. “They don’t need to put that in schools. It ain’t right. I’ve got 24 grandkids and a little girl who’s seven, and I don’t want them around that.”
Record-breaking voter registration – which pushed the state’s voter rolls above 17.3 million, 5 percent higher than in the 2004 presidential election – led officials to add precincts and poll workers and order more ballots to meet the expected demand.
In Orange County, some 400 people were on alert in case problems were reported with the all-electronic voting system, said Brett Rowley, community outreach manager for the county registrar.
“We’ve got paper ballots as a backup,” he said.
In San Bernardino County, rainy weather may have kept people from voting in the early morning. The county had about 829,000 registered voters and added polling places, personnel and phone lines in expectation of a big turnout.
“We’ve thrown everything at this election, but I do know there’s still a long day ahead of us,” said Kari Verjil, the county registrar.
Associated Press Writers Terry Collins in San Francisco, Tracie Cone in Sacramento, Daisy Nguyen in Glendale, and Linda Deutsch, Thomas Watkins and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
