L.A. voting at record pace

Of the county's 4.3 million registered voters, 48.5 percent had cast ballots by 2 p.m., the LAT reports, citing a random sampling of 30 precincts. That compares with 43.6 percent in the 2004 election, which set the previous record (that does not iinclude absentee ballots or early voting). From the Times:

The day quickly took on a distinctive feel. The act of voting felt almost festive, not like the typical civic chore. Parents took their children to witness history in the making. Some voters arrived clad in red, white and blue, cameras in hand. Theodoric Usher, who took his own lawn chair, said the scene in Silver Lake looked like a "rock concert." And few were willing to take a chance that their vote might not be counted. Instead of voting absentee, Inglewood resident Alice Williams arrived early to vote in person. "People fought for me to wait in this line," she said. "I'm voting."

Nationwide, there have been few voting problems, reports Politico.

Nationwide, Michael McDonald, a voting expert at George Mason University, predicted that turnout would reach about 64 percent of the eligible voters. That would make the 2008 election historic in the number of people who voted, but not the percentage of eligible voters who cast ballots. The 2008 rate would roughly match the 63.8 percent turnout in the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon and rank just below the 65.7 percent turnout of the 1908 presidential contest between William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan, he said. But it would not come close to attaining the astonishing 81.3 percent turnout recorded in the Civil War era contest between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1860.