Washington Bureau

Obama fans tie up traffic in Northern Virginia

LEESBURG,Va.-- An idea of the size of the crowd Obama is drawing today in Leesburg: Traffic is so backed up it took 45 minutes to drive half a mile to the venue, Ida Lee Park.

Early voting has already attracted 300 people a day to two sites in Leesburg and Sterling, said Judy Brown, Loudoun County general registrar.

The fast-growing Northern Virginia area saw a flood of new registrants this year, she said, adding that the Obama campaign brought in roughly 75 percent of all the registration forms the county received.

Absentee voting is underway, and there are reports of some people receiving double absentee ballots. Expecting a "rough night" on Election Day due to high turnout, Brown said she was under the impression she was not supposed to process the hundreds of absentee ballots that have been mailed to her office -- because of problems with the absentee ballots. She feared not getting a head start processing the ballots could delay election results.

But the Virginia Board of Elections has not ordered registrats to halt processing ballots, according to spokeswoman Susan Pollard.

Pollard acknowledged there may have been "miscommunication" among the state's 134 localities, but she said as long as election officials check voter information on mailed in ballots against the voter rolls, they can process those ballots now.

A 2007 state law allows the processing of ballots by computers before Election Day, Pollard said.

-- Neil Simon
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