To beat Election Day rush, throngs waiting to vote early

ATLANTA -- By 10 a.m. Wednesday, Margaret Jones and her sister, Ann Simmons, had waited 90 minutes to vote early at the Adamsville Recreation Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Sitting with hundreds of others in the center's gymnasium, they had perhaps another hour left — but they didn't mind.

"If it takes longer, it takes longer," said Jones, 63, planning to vote for Democratic nominee Barack Obama. "As long as it takes, I'll be here until I vote. This is a very historic moment in this country's history, and it's important to be part of what's going on."

Added Simmons, a retired high school teacher: "After 40 years, I can finally vote for an African American for president who has a legitimate chance of winning. I always told my students voting is a privilege for us. It's not a responsibility or a duty or a burden. It's a privilege, and never more so than this year."

Georgians are turning out by the hundreds of thousands to vote early, ahead of Tuesday's anticipated crush at the polls. In some counties, they waited four and five hours Monday — and up to nine hours in one Atlanta suburb. By Wednesday, waits averaged two to three hours.

About 25% of Georgia's 5.8 million registered voters — 1.5 million — had cast advance ballots by Wednesday, said Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel.

Nationally, early and absentee voting has increased dramatically since starting in late September. Early-voting hours have been extended in Florida, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Tennessee. The heaviest such voting has been in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

Early-bird voters have lined up even in states that saw little of Obama or Republican nominee John McCain, such as heavily Democratic Illinois and heavily Republican Texas.

Paul Gronke of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon predicts that up to one-third of voters will vote early, up from 20% in 2004.

Voters at two Atlanta precincts — one predominantly black, the other mostly white — talked Wednesday about braving the season's coldest temperatures. Many said they wanted to eliminate the risk of last-minute snags on Election Day.