Ten California counties, including Alameda County, used electronic voting machines today for the first time in a presidential election. State law requires poll workers to offer voters the option of a paper ballot, but many voters said that when they asked for the ballots they were refused.

"I've used the paper ballot in the past and I feel more comfortable using it," said Kate Witt, 26, who voted in Berkeley. "I think computers are sketchy after what happened in Florida [in 2000]," she said.

Instead of giving her a paper ballot, Witt said, a poll worker helped her use the electronic machine, watching her while she voted and asking who she supported for president.

Voters in Berkeley cast their votes Tuesday on Diebold electronic voting machines. Photo by Jeff Kearns

Other voters who asked for paper ballots were offered provisional ballots, which often are not counted until weeks after the election, said Leah Castella, commander at San Francisco's Election Protection, a hotline set up to field voter complaints.

"There was a collective outcry," said Castella, who notified the Secretary of State's office about the issue. "We had put in calls, voters had called."

Near UC Berkeley, lines stretched down the block at some polling places and many students showed up to vote only to discover that their names were not on the rolls.

Caitlin Koleher, 18, and her three friends, all first-time voters, came together to Newman Hall church on College Avenue to vote. Yet when they arrived, only one of them was on the list. The rest had to cast provisional ballots that would be reviewed by the registrar to determine their eligibility.

"I brought every bank statement and utility bill," said Koleher, who filled out a registration form in September. "I'm totally disappointed. I was so excited to vote. This is such an important election."

Extraordinarily high voter registration probably caused most of the delays in processing new voters, said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.

"We used to worry what would happen if you had an election and nobody came," said Alexander. "Now what happens if everyone comes? The system is strained beyond its capacity."

Alexander said the worst problems were in Alameda and Los Angeles County, where stacks of new registrations had overwhelmed election officials.

Other students said they had waited over an hour to cast their vote.

A law student monitoring the voting at Newman Hall, who did not want to give her name, said she estimated that one in three voters at that polling place had been forced to vote provisionally.

"I tell them to cast a provisional ballot so that they have that feeling of 'at least I tried,'" she said.

But party officials, who had mobilized dozens of lawyers up and down the state reported few problems overall at the polls.

Fred Altshuler, California state counsel for the Kerry campaign, who was keeping track of voter complaints called in to the Democratic Party hotline in Los Angeles, said he was surprised at the low volume of calls.

"Everyone says this is the smoothest election they've ever seen," said Altshuler.

Doug Boyd, treasurer for the California Republican party, reported scattered problems, but no major trends.

"It's sort of a potpourri [of phone calls]," he said. "Somebody has a premarked ballot, or there's a receipt already removed from the ballot when they get it. But there's been nothing extreme."

Election Protection had reported over 1,500 incidents of voter difficulties in California half an hour before the polls closed.