By Anjali Athavaley, Pervaiz Shallwani, Sharon Adarlo, Alison Fox and Heather Haddon 
 
 UPDATED | Despite last-minute efforts by officials in New York and New Jersey to help storm victims vote, confusion, lack of electricity and long lines still plagued polling sites throughout the area Tuesday. 
 
 To prevent disenfranchising voters, shuttle buses were running in hard-hit areas, voting locations were combined and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive ordering allowing storm victims to vote outside of their district Monday night. Still, problems arose as soon as some locations opened. 
 
 On the playground of Scholars’ Academy on Beach 104th St. in Rockaway Park, several voting locations from the western end of the Rockaway peninsula were consolidated into one tent-covered polling site. Problems started immediately, as poll workers arrived to find that generators, heaters and lights were nowhere to be found. 
 
 “It just got a little chaotic,” said pollworker Estel Lyons. “We had it planned the best we could and there were a few glitches.” 
 
 Zuma Press People gather to vote at a makeshift tent, which is used as a polling station in Rockway. 
 
 Marie Howley of Rockaway Park used a rental car to drive in from Rockville Centre on Long Island, where she has been staying with her daughter. Her only complaint was lack of sufficient light in the tents. “It’s dark in there,” she said. “You had to hold up the card to see. I think I filled in all the holes correctly.” 
 
 In hard-hit Hoboken, various snafus caused long waits for voters to cast ballots at a combined polling location for two districts on Grand Street. The doors of the Multi Service Center of Hoboken weren’t open at 6 a.m., poll workers struggled to find a key to open the operational voting machines and voters were told they might have to cast paper ballots, said Joe Maziarski, a 27-year-old Hoboken resident at the polling site. 
 
 “People weren’t really happy with that idea,” said Maziarski, a TV producer. 
 
 The machines were eventually opened but the tables lacked signs directing people to their appropriate polling district, and voters took it upon themselves to guide people, Maziarski said. “It was very disorganized. You couldn’t tell who was running the organization,” he said. 
 
 Sandy even threw some kinks in the voting process in parts of New York City where the lights stayed on throughout the storm. 
 
 In Park Slope, voters who usually cast their ballots at John Jay High School, now serving as an shelter for storm evacuees, were directed to PS 282, more than a half a mile away. Some residents had received fliers passed out on Monday by Assembyman James F. Brennan redirecting them to the new site. 
 
 Lines stretched outside the school and around the block. But displaced voters got a break and were directed to a separate entrance where lines were shorter. Those who already knew their election district were processed quickly, in about half an hour. 
 
 It was unclear if the shorter lines were because of lower turnout from residents redirected from their usual polling places. 
 
 At the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School in midtown Manhattan, polling workers said that around noon, they had run out of affidavit ballot envelopes needed for voters who weren’t registered at the polling site. 
 
 Jon Protas/The Wall Street Journal A double line of voters stretches around the block as people wait to vote on West End Ave at 95th street in Manhattan. 
 
 “Governor Cuomo sits up there in Albany and signs an executive order, but he’s not in the trenches,” said coordinator Fred Kelly. 
 
 Another Board of Elections worker said some voters had submitted ballots without envelopes, meaning their votes wouldn’t count. 
 
 Voters were instructed to try other polling places in midtown. “I figured there would be a long line, but I thought I’d be able to vote here,” said 22-year-old James Bedell, who lives in East Village but works as a bank analyst in midtown. He said of the confusion at the high school, “A lot of people don’t even know what they’re supposed to do.” 
 
 At some sites, voting was going smoothly. Voters have no wait time to use a polling booth at one Teterboro site that is accepting votes from displaced Moonachie residents. 
 
 Eleanor Madison, 77, displaced by the storm, said her town had shuttles to Teterboro so they could vote. 
 
 “We had calls from our police department,” she said about the voting change. “But not everybody is getting the calls. People have told me,” she said, guessing their numbers were not listed or registered. 
 
 “They are calling people but I say they should go around with a megaphone,” she said. 
 
 Dale Birnbaum, a small-business owner from South Brunswick who has been displaced by Sandy, struggled to figure out how to vote electronically. She couldn’t easily find information on the state’s website, and resorted to contacting friends on Facebook. She eventually contacted the Middlesex County clerk’s office for an application, but had yet to receive a response Tuesday. 
 
 “I want to vote so badly,” said Birnhaum, who is staying with her daughter in West New York and is going to try to vote provisionally in Hudson County. “I have local people I would love to vote for but I just want to vote for the president.” 
 
 Associated Press Poll worker Lisa Amico, right, helps voters by flashlight in a dark and unheated tent serving as a polling site in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island. 
 
 New Jersey residents who chose to vote electronically were facing confusion and uncertainty whether their votes would be counted. 
 
 Kate Supple, a 29-year-old Jersey City resident who was displaced by Sandy and staying in Manhattan, emailed her application to the Hudson County clerk Monday. Supple said she received a brief email acknowledgement of her application but has yet to receiver her ballot, and was worried that her vote wouldn’t be counted. 
 
 Poll worker Lisa Amico, right, helps voters by flashlight in a dark and unheated tent serving as a polling site in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island. 
 
 Several confused voters showed up Tuesday morning at PS 288 in Coney Island. A sign posted on the gate told them “school closed. No voting here.” A smaller sign directed people to 3001 west 1st street, 25 blocks away. 
 
 Martha Gonzalez, 23, showed up to vote but quickly realized she couldn’t do so here. “My Internet is down in my household,” said Gonzalez, who lost her job at a liquor store that was damaged in the storm. “I thought it was here.” 
 
 William Soto, 54, rode his bicycle to PS 288 with the hope of voting. When he saw the sign the retired mechanic got ready to turn right back around and go home. 
 
 “Obama, I’m sorry, I’m not going there,” he said about the new polling location. “It’s too much for me.” 
 
 Lines were long but the mood was subdued and civil at Bethel Baptist Church in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. The area was largely untouched by the storm. 
 
 Several people had heard of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order allowing voters in nine counties affected by Sandy, including New York City, Westchester and Long Island, to vote at any site by affidavit ballot and wondered allowed if it might help them skip 45-minute waits to vote. But no one appeared to leave to try their luck. 
 
 – with Jennifer Smith 
 
 See more photos of New York and New Jersey residents voting in areas affected by superstorm Sandy. ||||| via @NewspaperVideo's Twitter 
 
 via @CBSMiami's Twitter 
 
 via @LizRoldanCBS4's Twitter 
 
 via @AdamBeasley's Twitter 
 
 via @doug_hanks Twitter 
 
 
 
 
 
 Update, 10:30 a.m. There's at least one neighborhood in Miami immune to hours-long voting waits: South Beach. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Perhaps most voters cast absentees or early ballots. More likely: most neighbors around here are either sleeping off a night at Mansion, baking in the sun completely oblivious to the fact that it's Election Day, or are German DJs who can't vote in the States. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Either way, this was the scene at Fienberg Fisher Elementary School: 
 
 
 
 
 
 photo by Tim Elfrink 
 
 Inside the doors, about 15 voters were filling out ballots in voting booths, on folding chairs or sitting along the walls. Total time to cast a ballot: About 15 minutes. 
 
 Life is good in SoBe. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Update 10:40 It's a world of difference in Edgewater, where New Times web editor Jose Duran found a three-hour line outside of Cameron House: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Update 12:09 New Times fellow Jon Tayler reports from Trinity Cathedral Hall at 14th St. and Biscayne Boulevard, where the line stretches out of the church and well into the parking lot. 
 
 
 
 
 
 No poll workers have given any official wait times, but Tayler estimates the full wait will easily take two hours. 
 
 
 
 
 
 photo by Jon Tayler 
 
 At 7 a.m. this morning, 829 polling sites opened in schools, storefronts and churches around Miami-Dade County. And despite the fact that almost half of likely Florida voters have already cast ballots, imposing lines quickly formed, snaking out front doors and down sidewalks -- and forcing some to abandon their election plans so they could get to work.Still, election officials say presidential voting is running as smoothly as possible so far. "We're going to see long lines because voters are enthusiastic," Christina White, deputy supervisor at Miami-Dade County Elections tells Riptide.Wait times have varied wildly around the county so far, based on online reports. Thes Kathleen McGregory reports on Twitter that some voters cast ballots in less than half an hour at City Hall in Coconut Grove.But photos from Liberty City to Miami Shores to Sunny Isles show long lines stretching out of the polling places.Thanks to an absurdly long ballot -- the handiwork of Florida's GOP-dominated Legislature, which tacked on 11 lengthy constitutional amendments -- voters can't just pop in, fill in a bubble for Mitt or Barry, and then move on.But White says early reports that some poll places were running short on ballots or on voting booths were incorrect, adding she's heard no reports so far of "major issues.""We've deployed the maximum equipment possible at every site," she says. "In many places, we have space limitations."Here are some scenes culled from Twitter:Have any election day horror stories? Share them in the comments or tweet us @MiamiNewTimes. We'll keep this post updated as voting continues today. ||||| The final minutes of turning absentee ballots at Miami-Dade election headquarters. Staffers scrambled to check in as many outstanding ballots as they could before the 7 pm deadline. 
 
 The Miami-Dade Elections Department is counting absentee ballots a day after the election. They hope to finish today. 
 
 Dont expect election results from Miami-Dade County anytime soon. 
 
 The countys beleaguered elections supervisor told reporters Wednesday night that her employees, still processing thousands of absentee ballots, wont finish until Thursday. 
 
 Supervisor Penelope Townsley acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the elections process, according to Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS4. She spoke after another day during which elections workers fed thousands of pages of ballots into scanning machines. 
 
 With the presidential race settled  but Florida still too close to call  Miami-Dades lack of final results have left a much-mocked blank spot on the long-decided electoral map. 
 
 Earlier Wednesday, the county had said 20,000 absentee ballots still needed to be counted. The office of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez issued a news release insisting that the unprecedented length of the ballot represents over 100,000 pages that need to be reviewed and verified, one by one. 
 
 This in no way is representative of any issues or delays, but a matter of unprecedented volume, the release said, noting that the countys canvassing board is continuing to examine suspect absentee ballots. 
 
 Overall, President Barack Obama had more than 61 percent of the vote in Miami-Dade, or 521,329 votes, while Mitt Romney had 317,382, or 37.6 percent, according to the election departments website. The county was plagued Tuesday by embarrassing delays and long lines preventing the state to be called for Obama or Romney. 
 
 Deputy Elections Supervisor Christina White insisted Wednesday morning that an unusually long ballot and high voter turnout, which was 64 percent, was to blame, not a lack of resources. 
 
 Its not that there were any problems or glitches, White told reporters. Its about volume and paper left to be processed. 
 
 Miami-Dade elections staffers worked overnight Tuesday and through Wednesday to count some 30,000 absentee ballots that had been dropped off or mailed to the Doral headquarters and county government center in downtown Miami at the last minute. The ballots had to be turned in by 7 p.m. Tuesday to be eligible for counting. 
 
 Teams of staffers counted 10,000 overnight, but still had another 20,000 to review Wednesday afternoon at the Doral headquarters. 
 
 The process is slow and tedious. To start, a dozen elections staffers must electronically compare images of voters signatures on absentee ballots with the signatures on the voters registration cards. Then the workers must determine whether the ballots have been properly filled out before counting them in scanning machines. 
 
 If staffers reject any ballots, they set them aside for the Miami-Dade canvassing board to make the final call. The board, sitting in an adjacent room, consists of the chair, County Judge Shelley Kravitz, County Judge Andrew Hague, and the county supervisor of elections, Penelope Townsley. 
 
 The elections office must also count all provisional ballots by 5 p.m. Thursday. White said she did not know the total number of provisional ballots. 
 
 Obama wont lose the lead in Miami-Dade, where his campaign had a massive grass-roots operation. But how the final batch of ballots affects the overall number in Florida remains to be seen  Obama leads by just over 46,000, according to the state election departments most recent numbers. 
 
 The race could still be close enough to trigger a recount in Florida, unless it is waived by Romney, who lost the overall election to the president. 
 
 On Wednesday afternoon, the total difference between the candidates hovered just above the .5 percentage point needed to trigger a recount as the final absentee and early voting numbers trickled in across the state. With such a razor-thin margin, no media outlets had called Florida for Obama or Romney. 
 
 Overall in Florida, at least 8,307,749 voters cast ballots for president, just under the number cast in 2008, when Obama won handily. 
 
 In Miami-Dade, so far, it appears the number of voters who cast ballots for president will be just shy of the 864,636 who did so four years ago. 
 
 Lines were so long in some polling places here that the last voter did not leave the West Kendall Regional Library until a few minutes after 1 a.m. 
 
 When polls officially closed at 7 p.m. hundreds of people were still waiting to cast ballots in precincts around South Florida, in an election that was marked by long lines and the occasional problem. Even after the networks called the race for President Obama, people in South Florida remained in line. 
 
 Voters complained that many stations lacked enough poll workers, scanning machines and privacy booths to address the crowds. Dozens of workers were diverted from closed polling places to others that faced daunting queues, and 150 extra optical scanners were distributed throughout the day. 
 
 This article will be updated as more information becomes available. ||||| Massachusetts voters flocked to the polls today, drawn by the chance to vote in sharply contested races for president and US Senate. Many precincts reported long lines and steady turnout. 
 
 After long, intense campaigns, voters said they were thrilled, and more than a little relieved, that Election Day was finally at hand — and they were eager to have their say. 
 
 In Waltham, where voters began arriving at 6:30 a.m., turnout was strong. 
 
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 “It’s wonderful,” said Georgie Hallock, an election warden. “And the number of absentee ballots has been fantastic.” 
 
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 Jilda Diorio, 67, voted Republican. It was “time for a change as far as the presidency goes,” she said. And she liked how US Senator Scott Brown, who is being challenged by Democrat Elizabeth Warren, “worked across the aisle.” 
 
 Terry Goodridge, on the other hand, voted Democratic. Obama had “accomplished a lot,” she said. As for Romney, “we’ve had our fill of him,” she said. 
 
 In Copley Square around noon, the line to vote stretched out of the Boston Public Library and onto the sidewalk. Jim Riordan, 55, said he had waited in line two hours to cast his ballot. 
 
 “It’s just a total mess downstairs,” he said. “It’s usually bad, but this is worse.” 
 
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 Riordan, an independent, said he voted for Obama, who by his reckoning “did a good job,” and Warren. 
 
 Sarah Godfrey, 33, said she planned to split her ticket by voting for Romney for president and Warren for Senate. 
 
 “I’m just not happy with the situation right now, and if things aren’t going well, it doesn’t make sense to vote for the incumbent,” said Godfrey, who voted for Obama in 2008. 
 
 “I’m not saying it’s necessarily Obama’s fault, but maybe we can give somebody else a shot this time,” she said. 
 
 As of 3 p.m., 148,133 people had cast their vote in Boston, representing 38.26 percent of registered voters, according to the city. Turnout is slightly lower than during the last presidential election. As of 3 p.m. on Election Day in 2008, 152,780 people had voted, which was about 40.11 percent of registered voters. 
 
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 Statewide, officials predict that as many as 3.2 million people could vote, surpassing the record set in 2008. 
 
 In Belmont, a cheer went up outside the Beech Street Center after Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and his wife, Ann, cast their votes in their hometown. 
 
 “I think you know,’’ was Romney’s reply when reporters asked for whom he had voted for president. Romney, who drew several hundred supporters as well as backers of President Obama, said he was feeling “very good, very good.” 
 
 Wearing his signature barncoat and accompanied by his wife and one of his two daughters, Brown voted in Wrentham around 7:30 a.m. He said he voted for himself, and that he expected the election, which is considered to be extremely close by experts, will have a clear winner by 10 p.m. tonight. 
 
 “It’s going to be a close election and I look forward to the results,” Brown told reporters. 
 
 Some 200 people were already in line waiting to vote when Brown arrived. 
 
 “I’ve never seen it this crowded before,’’ Brown said. “And I’ve been here for 25 years.’’ 
 
 In Cambridge, Warren cast her vote around 7:45 a.m., and went to the polling place accompanied by her husband and granddaughter. 
 
 “This campaign was never about me,” Warren told reporters after voting. “This campaign was about all of us, about all the people who invested in it, all the people who truly believed that if you got out there and worked together you can make a difference.” 
 
 Globe correspondent Johanna Kaiser and John Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report ||||| Your vote has been counted, thank you for voting. 
 
 Many Americans fear that the results of the presidential election will be compromised. Do you? 
 
 So many voters showed up at the Miami-Dade elections headquarters in Doral to cast absentee ballots in person Sunday afternoon that the department shut down the operation less than two hours in, saying it did not have enough resources to help everyone. 
 
 What began Sunday morning as an attempt by the Miami-Dade elections department to let more people early vote devolved into chaos and confusion only days before the nation decides its next president. 
 
 Call it the debacle in Doral. 
 
 Elections officials, overwhelmed with voters, locked the doors to their Doral headquarters and temporarily shut down the operation, angering nearly 200 voters standing in line outside — only to resume the proceedings an hour later. 
 
 On the surface, officials blamed technical equipment and a lack of staff for the shutdown. But behind the scenes, there was another issue: Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. 
 
 The Republican had never signed off on the additional in-person absentee voting hours in the first place. 
 
 “That was counter to what I said on Friday, which was we were not going to change the game mid-stream,” he said. “I said, ‘No, there’s no way we did this.’” 
 
 But Gimenez, who is in a nonpartisan post, quickly realized it was better to let the voting go on, and the voting resumed. 
 
 The mayor said he found out early Sunday afternoon — from his daughter-in-law — about the extra voting hours. 
 
 The move had been approved by Deputy Mayor Alina Hudak at the request of Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley. The plan was simple: Allow voters to request, fill out and return absentee ballots in person for four hours Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Early voting the Sunday before Election Day used to be allowed. But it was eliminated by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott last year after Barack Obama used early voting to help him win Florida in 2008 — and therefore the presidency. 
 
 Gimenez said his initial reaction was to stop the last-minute Sunday voting. 
 
 But by then, around 180 people stood in line outside the elections office at 2700 NW 87th Ave. They shouted “Let us vote!” and banged on the locked glass doors. 
 
 “This is America, not a third-world country,” said Myrna Peralta, who waited in line with her 4-year-old grandson for nearly two hours before the doors closed. “They should have been prepared.” 
 
 “My beautiful Sunshine State,” she lamented. “They’re not letting people vote.” 
 
 Minutes earlier, a department spokeswoman had said the office did not have enough resources — only one ballot printer, five voting booths and two staffers — to handle the throng of voters and would begin turning new voters away. 
 
 “We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” spokeswoman Christina White had said. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.” 
 
 Calvin Sweeting, a 59-year-old from Opa-locka, was told he would be the last person to vote. 
 
 “They said I was the lucky one,” he said, shrugging. “It didn’t seem fair to me.” 
 
 Or to Jean Marcellus, 52, who stood behind him. 
 
 “This is ridiculous,” Marcellus shouted, holding up the ticket he was given to secure his place in the queue. “I’m the next one!” 
 
 Nearly all the voters stayed in line until a campaign worker reported her car had been towed from a private parking lot across the street. Scores of people ducked out of the line to check on their own cars. A second car had been towed. 
 
 Behind closed doors were back-and-forth phone calls among the department, the county attorney’s office and the mayor, who eventually decided to let the people outside the elections department vote. Democrats also unleashed a torrent of phone calls to reporters and the county. 
 
 “I’m upset at this change, but at the end, when you have 200, 300 voters out there ready to go, you really can’t disenfranchise them,” Gimenez said. Of the whole situation, he added: “I’m certainly embarrassed.” 
 
 The elections office reopened its doors at 3 p.m., after being closed for about an hour, apologizing and announcing that it had added a ballot-printing machine and more poll workers and would remain open until all voters in line at 5 p.m. had cast their in-person absentee ballots. 
 
 The crowd cheered. Around 400 people stood in line at 5 p.m. Campaign workers passed out bottled water and granola bars. 
 
 Despite lines up to seven hours long at times during eight days of early voting, Gimenez had decided late last week not to ask Gov. Scott to extend early-voting hours in Miami-Dade. The last early-voting polls officially closed at 7 p.m. Saturday, but they remained open until the last voter in line checked in with a poll worker — about 1 a.m. Sunday. 
 
 Gimenez defended his decision Sunday to refrain from asking the governor for more early-voting hours. 
 
 “We all knew what the rules were. When you start doing things like that, you’re opening to criticism of favoring one side or the other,” he said. “All of us knew it was going to be eight days of early voting. It was going to end on Saturday. There is going to be hundred of polling places [open] on Tuesday.” 
 
 The county did add poll workers, machines and voting booths to early-voting sites to alleviate some wait times. 
 
 On Sunday, Gimenez said he was angrier at Hudak, his deputy, than at Townsley, the elections supervisor. 
 
 “I’m going to have to deal with this internally,” he said. “I’m not saying somebody’s going to be lose their job, but somebody made a poor error in judgment that’s not really helping the community.” 
 
 Hudak told Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS 4 that she approved the decision, which at the time she did not see as a major policy shift. 
 
 “I apologized to the mayor,” she said. “I should have told him. I made a bad call.” 
 
 Gimenez said the elections department wanted to offer more hours of in-person absentee voting in part because some voters had yet to receive ballots the county had mailed them due to a post-office glitch. 
 
 Opening the elections office from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. was a work-around to a provision in the state law that eliminated early voting the Sunday before Election Day. The Florida Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in the wee hours of Sunday morning seeking to somehow extend voting in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties before Tuesday. 
 
 The law allows elections supervisors to accept in-person absentee ballots through 7 p.m. Tuesday — including Sunday, at the elections supervisor’s discretion. As of Friday, Miami-Dade and Broward had planned to open Sunday only for voters to drop off absentee ballots. 
 
 Miami-Dade switched gears to also let voters ask for a ballot and fill it out on the spot. Palm Beach and two Tampa Bay-area counties, Hillsborough and Pinellas, did the same. 
 
 Broward did not initially follow suit but then a spokeswoman said it would try to accommodate voters — after assisting people who had made appointments to cast their ballots Sunday. 
 
 But there were no lines Sunday afternoon at the Lauderhill satellite office located at 1501 NW 40th Ave. Poll workers said they had assisted voters who had appointments as well as voters who had dropped by without an appointment to fill out a ballot. 
 
 Voters across the state can request and cast absentee ballots in person Monday. They can also drop them off at elections supervisor’s offices — but not at their precincts — on Election Day. 
 
 The Democrats’ lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court, argued that an emergency judge’s order was necessary to “extend voting opportunities” before Tuesday in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, including allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person. 
 
 It’s unclear exactly what more a court could have done, two days before Election Day. The lawsuit did not ask U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz to reopen all early-voting sites. 
 
 “The extraordinarily long lines deterred or prevented voters from waiting to vote. Some voters left the polling sites upon learning of the expected wait, and others refused to line up altogether,” the lawsuit said. “These long lines and extreme delays unduly and unjustifiably burdened the right to vote.” 
 
 An attorney for the Miami-Dade elections supervisor filed a motion Sunday morning saying the lawsuit was moot because the county would allow for in-person absentee voting Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups had asked the governor late last week to extend early-voting hours by executive authority. Scott declined Thursday night. 
 
 On Friday, Monroe County Elections Supervisor Harry Sawyer Jr., a Republican, sent the governor a letter asking for more hours. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner responded that the early-voting reports he was receiving from elections supervisors across the state were positive. 
 
 Scott signed a law last year reducing the number of early-voting days to eight from 14 and eliminating voting on the Sunday before Election Day, which Democrats used to turn out supporters in 2008. The new law guarantees one Sunday of early voting. 
 
 The number of maximum hours offered stayed the same on the books, but four years ago, then-Gov. Charlie Crist effectively extended early voting by another 24 hours. 
 
 Separately, the party sued in Orlando circuit court asking to extend early-voting hours in Orange County after a bomb scare temporarily closed a polling place. On Sunday morning, a judge ruled that the Winter Park early-voting site should open for four hours. 
 
 Excluding that site and the counties that allowed in-person absentee voting, more than 4.4 million Floridians had voted early or absentee by Sunday morning. More than 2.4 million people had voted early — most of them Democrats. More than 2 million had voted absentee — most of them Republicans. 
 
 In 2008, more people voted early, and fewer voted absentee. 
 
 Miami Herald staff writers Marc Caputo, Diana Moskovitz and Charles Rabin contributed to this report.
– Americans flocked to the polls this morning, forming long lines in many places around the country. USA Today counted 75 people in line at one DC polling place. Here are some of the stories filtering in nationally: Some problems have already cropped up in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. One poll worker was caught telling voters they needed a registration card and picture ID, when the law only requires one of the two. Several problems with voting machines also cropped up, in one case forcing voters to be turned away for up to an hour. The lines were also long in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney cast his ballot today, the Boston Globe reports. When asked who he voted for, Romney replied, "I think you know." Scott Brown, meanwhile, marveled at the lines at his polling place. "I've never seen it this crowded before," he said, "and I've been here for 25 years." Joe Biden caused a bit of a stir after casting his ballot in Delaware, when a reporter asked if this was the last time he would vote for himself. "Oh, I don't think so," he replied, which Fox News is taking as a hint that he might run for president again. In New York and New Jersey, confusion reigned, the Wall Street Journal reports. Power outages forced some polling places to make on-the-fly changes, like opening voting machines and switching to paper ballots. "It was very disorganized. You couldn't tell who was running the organization," says one Hoboken voter. The Miami New Times is reporting "imposing lines," even though half of likely Florida voters have already voted—adding that, because Florida's GOP has put 11 lengthy constitutional amendments on the ballot, voting can take a while.