Tech glitches reported in early vote

8220;We got five machines8212;one of them8217;s got to work,8221; said Willette Scullank, a trouble shooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board. Election officials in Delaware County, Indiana, planned to seek a court order to extend voting after a computer error prevented many voters from casting ballots.

With a third of Americans voting on new equipment and voters navigating new registration databases and rules governing acceptable IDs, election watchdogs worried about polling problems on Tuesday.

This year was the deadline for many of the changes enacted after the Florida balloting chaos in the 2000 presidential election. 8220;There has not been an election in decades that has had this much change,8221; said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Up for grabs on Tuesday are all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and 33 of 100 Senate seats, along with offices of 36 state governors. Democrats have to gain 15 seats to control the House and six to win the Senate.

Because individual congressional races are generally decided by fewer votes than presidential contests, any problems are more likely to affect the outcome, said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan group that monitors voting changes.

Nearly half of all voters will be using optical-scan systems that ask voters to fill in the blanks, with ballots then fed by poll workers into a computerised system. Another 38 percent will votes on touchscreen machines, criticised by many computer scientists as prone to hacking and other problems.

Experts foresaw trouble. Touchscreens may display incorrect ballots or fail to boot properly. Voters might circle a name8212;instead of filling in a box8212;and not have their decision scanned correctly.

8211;anick Jesdanun