Election Day was a day that was worth the wait

Hampton Roads voters stood in the dark, endured the rain and ignored nearly two years of partisan bickering Tuesday morning to focus on one thing they all had in common: waiting.

They lined up, for as long as six hours in some cases, and most of them seemed to almost relish the achievement. They emerged from polling places not frustrated, but buoyant.

"I voted! I voted!" Anne Frazier, a 44-year-old mother of three, called out after throwing her arms over her head as she walked out of Ocean View Elementary in Norfolk. "I never really felt the need to vote. This was my year. I'm a single mom with three kids, and each one of us is struggling paycheck to paycheck."

The long lines highlighted the importance of this 2008 election and the historic aspects of it - an African American at the top of one ticket, the possibility of a woman as vice president on the other. Lines that normally, even in previous presidential elections, might poke a few feet out of the polling place entrance unfurled this year down city blocks and curled into neighborhoods.

At 3 a.m., essentially the middle of the night, five people already waited outside Grove Baptist Church in Portsmouth. Not long after, the scene outside the church took on the feel of a small carnival when Jackie White began erecting a tent.

White and other cooks from Jay's Carolina Bar-B-Que set up a short-order grill and sold breakfast: Danish pastry, hash browns, sausage and coffee. Later, they'd offer barbecue sandwiches, hush puppies, butter beans and drinks.

The Rev. Melvin Marriner, senior pastor at the church, handed out rain ponchos and umbrellas to those waiting in line, one of whom was Angel Hicks. Hicks had brought a book, an MP3 player and her 15-year-old son so that he would remember this election years from now.

"The time didn't matter, the rain didn't matter," Hicks said. "The only thing that mattered was me casting my vote today."

Whether it was Virginia's newfound swing-state importance that drew voters or the "historic" nature of the election, which people mentioned time and again, many people went to the polls early to make sure they got a chance to vote.

Dyanna Dortch, an Old Dominion University student, was so hyped up about the election that instead of pulling an all-nighter Monday to work on school assignments she pulled one to watch CNN election coverage. Then she headed to her polling place in the dark.

"I was at the polls at 4 this morning," Dortch said. "I wasn't the only one there."

Some people turned up to vote dressed for the event, while respecting Virginia's ban on attire that promotes a certain candidate.

Debbie Chappell always gets decked out for Election Day, and this year while she got in line at King's Fork Middle School in Suffolk, she thought of her father, a World War II veteran who recently passed away. She sported a sweater patterned in stars and stripes, a U.S. flag pin and a blue hat with a feather.

Later in the morning, the lines shrank in some places, but at Rosemont Middle School in Norfolk, hundreds of voters remained outside. By 11 a.m., more than half of the precinct's 4,000 voters had already cast ballots, but nearly 500 people still waited in line.

Diane Horry arrived at the school by 6:15 a.m. and didn't finish voting until four hours later.

A woman on a cell phone described the scene to a friend: "I've never seen anything like this in all my life."

Pilot writers DeAnne M. Bradley, Kristin Davis, Louis Hansen, Meghan Hoyer, Jen McCaffery, and Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer contributed to this report.

Lon Wagner, (757) 446-2341, Lon.Wagner@pilotonline.com