The lines started early. Most polling places had people waiting to vote when the doors opened at 7 a.m.

Marguerite Giguere arrived at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 101 E. 38th St. in Tacoma, around 8:30 a.m., then waited three hours to vote.

At 11:30 a.m. she commented on The News Tribune’s Political Buzz blog: “The poor poll workers were doing their best, but they were woefully understaffed and unable to stay on top of all the stuff going on. People were cutting in line with no consequences. People were taking numbers and coming back and being told they weren’t doing numbers anymore. People were standing in line a foot away while I voted.”

An hour did not improve the situation.

By 9:30 a.m., the line to get a number to vote stretched out the door, and workers told people that once they got that number they would have to wait two to three hours to vote. Later in the morning, Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy arrived with a team from election headquarters to help out.

McCarthy called the take-a-number system “a real faux pas.”

“It was well-intentioned, but it just backfired,” she said.

Shortly after that, deputy fire marshal Phil Ferrell found the church basement over its occupancy limit and directed about 100 people to wait elsewhere in the building.

Lines were long elsewhere in Tacoma, too.

Kathy Ursich got to Immanuel Presbyterian Church at 901 N. J St. around 11 a.m. and waited two hours. At Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, 3315 S. 19th St., voters who arrived around 10 a.m. waited an hour.

Some lines weren’t just long. They were odd.

Voters reported that in some places, lines for people whose names began with the letters A through L were long, while those for people with names beginning with the letters M through Z were almost nonexistent. For the record, The Dex Pierce County phone book devotes 264 pages to the first half of the alphabet and 222 to the second half.

Jay Arthur of University Place suspects that the uneven lines were the result of poor direction. Arthur got in line at Olympic View Baptist Church at 4704 Elwood Drive W. in University Place.

“I waited in a 20-person line only to get to the front and be told that I was in the wrong line for my last name. I didn’t know this, however, because none of the positions were labeled and no one knew which line to stand in,” he said. “The man that told me I was in the wrong line pointed me to another line. Wrong again. Although it was much shorter than the first, it was still a waste of time. I finally went to the third and final line, which was in the middle, and my last name starts with A.”

Secretary of State Sam Reed heard about Pierce County’s problems. His spokesman, David Ammons, released an assurance that anyone in line by 8 p.m. would be allowed to vote.

Ammons then took the opportunity to plug voting by mail.

“To my mind, this certainly underscores the practical wisdom of moving to vote-by-mail, which involves no waiting in line and allows folks to sit around the dining room table and, at their convenience at any hour of the day or night, to mark the ballot, stick a stamp on it on and mail it,” he said.

In the state, only King and Pierce counties operated poll sites in this election. King County will have discontinued in-person polling by the next election, leaving Pierce County as the lone holdout.

But some Pierce County residents remain passionate about the ability to vote with their neighbors. To them, it is the communal sacrament of democracy. Some suspect that the backups were the result of consolidating too many precincts into too few polling places.

“Never should we allow in-person voting to be discontinued,” said Tom Leander of Gig Harbor.

He tried twice to vote at Harbor Heights Assembly of God, which was taking voters from nine precincts. Leander found traffic backed up and waits of one to two hours.

“This appears to be intimidation by the county to force absentee balloting,” Leander said.

At DuPont’s Chloe Clark Elementary School, the line was long and complicated, yet relaxed.

Soldiers arrived by the busload from Fort Lewis. Many had difficult questions.

Pvt. Sara Dias, 28, had not received her absentee ballot from Missouri, her home state. Pvt. H. Hoie, 31, also from Missouri, was in the same situation. Election officials gave him a national ballot, sealed his vote and sent it to Missouri.

Spc. James Freeman, 27, said he did not mind waiting 40 minutes. Fort Lewis’ commanding officers encouraged soldiers to vote, and gave them time off to do so.

Fort Lewis soldiers also lined up at the county’s election headquarters to register and vote.

Pvt. Justin Collin, 24, stood in line with his voter registration form. Unlike civilians, military personnel can register up through Election Day, and election headquarters was the only place to do that.

It also fell to headquarters workers to deal with special problems. Lorraine Gable, for example, called from her daughter’s home in Pennsylvania. Gable had arranged to have her ballot sent there, but it had not arrived.

Troubleshooters from headquarters responded to a spate of touch-screen voting machines that failed.

It was a difficult day for machines. Judy Jones, who is blind, went to Bethlehem Lutheran Church and found that none of the audio voting equipment worked. Finally, she said, a poll worker had to fill out her ballot for her.

But, inconvenienced as many were, most voters were delighted by the turnout.

Beth Frick was happy to find the parking lot full at Zion Lutheran Church, 3410 Sixth Ave. in Tacoma. But she wondered where the voters were.

“They had them wrapped around like a coil inside,” Frick said. “It was thrilling.”

Normally, she said, she runs into two or three other people when she votes at the church.

Voters talked to one another, and a middle-aged woman admitted that this was the first time she had voted. This, the woman told others in line, was the first time she felt it really mattered.

“It’s very emotional when you see so many people in line,” Frick said. “It was excitement, excitement, excitement.”

At Tacoma’s First Christian Church, 602 N. Orchard St., Morgan Hutchins, 20, leaned against a door frame smiling at the line that moved slowly toward the sign-in tables.

“It’s a big turnout. I’m excited,” he said, then volunteered, “I work at a gun shop, and I voted for Obama.”

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com

Staff members Mike Archbold, Scott Fontaine, Randy McCarthy, Janet Jensen, Kathleen Cooper, Nancy Nilles, Brent Champaco, Jason Hagey, Dean J. Koepfler, Adam Lynn, Dan Voelpel, Kris Sherman, Hunter George and Debbie Cafazzo contributed to this report.