Lines stretched around buildings and crossed city blocks as people waited to cast ballots in the historic presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. Touchscreen voting machines malfunctioned in some precincts, yet voting Tuesday appeared to go smoothly overall.

The biggest trouble was big crowds. But folks seemed to take it in stride.

In the East, eager voters started lining up before dawn in New York, prompting erroneous reports that some precincts weren’t opening on time. In New Jersey, electronic machine glitches forced some New Jersey voters to cast paper ballots.

In the West, Californians also faced long lines, but voting went smoothly. In Orange County, south of Los Angeles, about 400 people were on hand to treat problems with the county’s all-electronic voting system.

Heavy rain plunged a handful of Los Angeles polling places into the dark, forcing some to move voting booths outside until electricity was restored. Voting didn’t stop.

Election officials predicted turnout rates as high as 80 percent in California, the country’s most populous state and the highest holder of electoral votes. In Virginia, State Board of Elections executive secretary Nancy Rodrigues said she expected 75 percent of the state’s registered voters to cast ballots by Tuesday night.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell urged voters to “hang in there” as state and country officials braced for a huge turnout in that hotly contested state. More than 160 people were lined up when the polls opened at First Presbyterian Church in Allentown. “I could stay an hour and a half at the front end or three hours at the back end,” joked Ronald Marshall, a black Democrat.

Hundreds converged on polling precincts in Missouri, another crucial battleground state. Norma Storms, a 78-year-old resident of Raytown, said her driveway was filled with cars left by voters who couldn’t get into nearby parking lots.

Ohio, which experienced extreme voting delays in the last hours of the 2004 election, had some jammed paper problems in Franklin County. “We’re taking care of things like that,” said elections spokesman Ben Piscitelli. “But there’s nothing major or systemic.”

What is uncommon about Tuesday’s contest is the sheer number of voters expected to descend on more than 7,000 election jurisdictions across the country. Voter registration numbers are up 7.3 percent from the last presidential election.

(LINK to Associated Press / NJ.com)