The McCain campaign has claimed tonight that voters have been intimidated at polling stations in several key battleground states, and launched a court battle in New Hampshire to overturn a decision that has kept their election monitors out of stations there, writes Mark Hennessyin Phoenix, Arizona.
Major US television networks have reported major voting difficulties in many states in today's presidential elections, though local news organisations in the states concerned have offered a more optimistic picture claiming that problems have occurred, but that they are few in number.
Voters in Washington DC, New York and elsewhere who attempted to vote this morning before they went to work were faced with queues that lasted for two hours and more, though the waiting time declined as the morning rush wore off.
In a press statement released a short while ago, the McCain camp called for "a zero tolerance" approach by local authorities to weed out voter fraud and intimidation, while, privately, Democrats have claimed that the same is happening in some of their key target areas.
"Given that four states in the 2004 Presidential Election were decided by 1 per cent or less, the McCain-Palin Campaign believes there should be a zero-tolerance policy for voter fraud and voter intimidation," the McCain campaign declared.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, members of the black extremist group, the Black Panthers "are intimidating voters by standing outside of a polling station while holding a night stick (a baton)," said the official McCain statement.
One Black Panther, described as Field Marshal Najee Muhammed said: "We will not allow some racists and other angry whites, who are upset over an impending Barack Obama presidential victory, to intimidate blacks at the polls.
"Most certainly, we cannot allow these racist forces to slaughter our babies or commit other acts of violence against the black population, nor our black president. We must organize to counter and neutralise these threats using all means at our disposal."
Also in Philadelphia, Republican election monitors have been removed from polling stations on the orders of the local Democrat-appointed judge in charge of elections, though Republicans have failed in a court bid tonight to get the order overturned.
In Florida, the McCain camp, in their official statement, have alleged that Obama supporters from outside the state have illegally vote, while it quoted another Republican supporter as saying that she was threatened by an Obama loyalist.
In Palm Beach in Florida, some voters have been confused because the questions about the presidential election do not appear until the second page of the ballot given to voters. Some have failed to fill this, and the vote is declared void as a result, CNN reported.
In Manchester, New Hampshire, Republicans have gone to court to overturn an order issued by the state's Secretary of State, William Gardner, which Republicans claim is denying them the opportunity to inspection registration lists.
In Northern Virginia, the McCain camp is claiming that "tens of thousands" of absentee ballots from the military have been lost in a state where the military vote could be decisive in deciding on the eventual victor for its electoral college votes.
So far, however, the picture created by the major television networks that major problems are occurring with the presidential vote is not supported by local media organisations, who - for now at least - are offering a more optimistic picture.
Rain-soaked voters ran into some problems in Virginia and North Carolina when water dripped off onto their ballot papers, thus making it impossible to scan them on optical laser readers.
Though queues in some places ran for up to two hours, the general picture is more successful so far - though polling stations have yet to cope with the evening rush expected as workers vote on their way home.
In Ohio, the decisive state in the 2004 race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, local authorities said they believed that eight out of every ten voters will take part today. The longest voting delay is about an hour there.
However, there have been attempts in Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, to confuse voters, who received text messages allegedly from the Democratic Party telling them to vote tomorrow.
In Cleveland, Ohio, the
Cleveland Plain Dealerreported that new machines to scan votes are operating well - despite fears in advance about them. Approximately 30 per cent of people in the state have already voted by early ballot.
The significant public interest in this year's election is shown by the fact that just two out of every 100 election workers hired by Ohio for today failed to show up for duty this morning - compared with two in every ten four years ago.
Just 25 problems with the new scanners were reported in one county, according to the Plain Dealer, and 20 of those were resolved immediately, while five broken machines were replaced.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, approximately a dozen of the nearly 2,000 voting machines pressed into service today have malfunctioned, and the problems have been taken care of, the local television station reported.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, voters waited for an hour, or more to cast their preference when polling stations opened, though waiting times fell once the morning rush was dealt with, the local television station reported.