Voting begins. And so do the problems.

Reports are streaming in from all over the country about long lines for early morning voting (no surprise there). About 1,000 students reportedly were lined up at Penn State before 7 A.M..  

We're also getting our first reports about machines malfunctioning or other polling place problems.  Over at the OurVoteLive blog, we see reports of some problems in Virginia, confirmed by CNN, regarding machines that broken down before voters could even cast a vote. At one polling place, per CNN, almost all of the machines failed. State law permits those voters to vote on paper ballots for the time being.

Here in Chicago, Barack Obama just cast his vote, with his daughters at his side.  

Update: Just to note that we'll be seeing a lot of glitches today.  As with the long lines, it won't be surprising. States have back-up systems, and when the machines break, like at the VA polling place, voters can still cast their votes, just using another method. Typically, we see a flood of reports like this in the morning, when the machines are just being turned on for voting. Those machines are typically either recalibrated or taken out of service and replaced, so ideally, all the kinks are worked out by midday, as far as voting technology goes.