ARLINGTON, VA., 3 November 2004 — Following the trend in most parts, voters in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia went to the polls in record numbers yesterday to elect their members of the Senate, Congress and various local government offices and, of course, a new president of the United States in this, the tightest presidential race in memory.

“People have been arriving in wheelchairs. We even had a woman arrive who was in labor — we let her jump the line,” said Anne Quinn, a Republican polling official in Northern Virginia, who added that the lines, “which are usually wide open, have been at least an hour long.” And this at midday, when most people are at work.

At 6 a.m. yesterday morning, when the polls opened, over 100 people were already in line, said Nick Kessler, a Democratic precinct captain for this largely Democratic Northern Virginia polling station. Delays were everywhere, he said, due in part to new complications with touch-pad voting machines and complicated referendums and bonds for local parks, schools and the metro.

“We got an amazing response,” Kessler said, when asked about getting Kerry volunteers. “Much, much, much more than in the past, there was a very strong sentiment by people who wanted to be involved.”

Mike Doheny is a lawyer who volunteered his time as a Democratic poll watcher, and said no Republican counterparts were present. This is the first time he’s volunteered for an election, “because of my special interest in the outcome of this election and because of the events during the last election.”

“This is the most important vote of my lifetime — because of the many important issues to be decided. We traveled to Ireland this summer and just about everyone we met approached us about it,” said Doheny, 63.

Frank Johnston is a former Marine who served in Vietnam, and a retired photographer for the Washington Post, who covered “forty years of campaigning with all presidential candidates from Lyndon Baines Johnson to George W. Bush.”

Johnston, who spoke to Arab News after he cast his vote, said this election is important to him, because “we’re dealing with a very serious international and national situation.

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans did not station lawyers at polling places. They have small teams of lawyers working phone banks across the region, ready to be dispatched to problem spots, several officials said. If large problems emerge, they said they have statewide networks of lawyers on call.

In Fairfax County, Va., the Republican Party’s general counsel, Chris Craig, met at 6 a.m. yesterday with several lawyers who will monitor phone banks and travel to polling places where problems are reported.

“The Republican Party has no interest in challenging registrations. We want all properly registered voters to have a chance in the process,” said Eric Lundberg, chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee.

“Anything of that sort would be completely unaffiliated with the Republican Party and would be something we would be discouraging and not encouraging.”

“I don’t think Bush has been given a fair shake with Iraq,” said Jeanine Ramos, 35, who voted for Gore four years ago. This year, the Federal Express courier said she voted for Bush.