From Sea to Shining Sea, They Lined Up to Be Heard

Even before the sun was up the country had begun to stir. From town house to apartment block, from corn farm to cattle ranch, a trickle, then a flow and finally a flood of people set off to make their voice heard. By mid-morning they had unleashed a mighty roar.

Six hundred and thirty-three days after he had set out on an improbable journey, announcing his bid for the White House under the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, the electoral passions that Barack Obama had helped to unleash were finally bursting into light. On the eve of an election in which record numbers turned out from east coast to west, Obama said he felt "pretty peaceful. Because my attitude is, if we've done everything we can do, then it's up to the people to decide."

And decide they did. Cynics would say that this is what you buy when you have the world's first $1bn election. But the one thing that was absent as divided America went to the polls was cynicism.

The earliest signs of electoral life were recorded in the heart of old colonial America - Virginia. By 4.30am the first queues were already well formed, some voters stood under umbrellas in the pouring rain. In those early moments of a momentous day, there was more noise from the crickets than passing traffic; suburban culs-de-sac were bathed in darkness.

In Woodbridge, in Prince William County, people came prepared for a long wait to participate in an election that has aroused intense passions among Virginians.

They carried folding chairs, cookie jars and mugs of coffee.

One woman arrived with her hair in curlers, and put the time spent waiting to exercise her citizen's rights to profitable use - combing it out.

Polls in the state opened at 6am, and when the front-runners emerged from the polling station having cast their ballots they did so with a sense of triumph. Some came out grinning and shaking their fists in victory. Others hugged. A few cheered.

"This has been such a long struggle. Whoever envisaged we could have a black president?" said Herman Washington, 46, a telecoms worker who was among the first in line at 4.30am. "It's very emotional and very compelling just to see this, and I keep thinking of the other people that I wish could be alive to see it as well."

For Celeste Norfleet, who writes Harlequin romances, the sheer act of voting was a cause for celebration. "You have to walk out with a smile on your face," she said.

Across the early-waking states, the idea of history in the making was front and centre of many voters' minds. Thoughts, too, turned to past ugliness and brutality, and the struggles against it that acted as the foundation for yesterday's vote.

Not least in Virginia, the place where slavery came to the New World with the founding of the first English colony at Jamestown in 1607. This was home of the Confederacy and one of the last states to dismantle segregation. Until 1967, it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry here.

"There are things in our history that have been horrible - just horrible - but now young people can see that there is hope," said Kanika Spruill, a school teacher.

"The fact that he is African American just gives young people hope that is not that impossible that they can do things in the future."

Pan 500 miles to the south, to Atlanta, Georgia. By now the sun was visible, the darkness edged aside. By 7am, huge lines could be seen snaking around entire city blocks.

This is the city of Martin Luther King, where the civil rights leader grew up and learned the preacher's trade.

In a school off Martin Luther King Drive, in a poor black neighborhood of Atlanta where panhandlers are common and many houses stand empty from foreclosure, about 200 people stood in dignified, almost sombre quiet, the kind of hushed respect you find in a library or church. Among them was Toni Smith, 54, who had come to vote at 6am and waited for an hour before she touched an electronic screen to mark the box that said Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

As she did so, she said, memories rushed back to her from her segregated Atlanta childhood. She was 12 years old before she was allowed to visit a cinema. At her black school she worked from textbooks discarded by the separate white schools. But the memory that came back most strongly was her experience of sitting for the first time at a lunch counter in Woolworth's in her home town of Macon, Georgia.

"We were terrified, even though the [civil rights] law had just been passed. We couldn't do that! I remember the white waitress coming up to us and she was so nice, that was very unexpected. We were nervous and didn't know what to order. I can still remember it: we ordered apple pie. I don't even like apple pie."

For Smith, the act of sitting on that stool at the lunch counter and the act of pressing the electoral box marked Obama were of a piece. "Yes, I felt a similarity between them. Both broke the barrier just to go and do it. Being served at the lunch counter made us feel like we were worth something; and now we get a chance to vote for a president who looks like us."

As the morning got under way, television pictures broadcast endless shots of voting queues. In Georgia, a state that hasn't voted Democrat in a presidential race since 1992 when it backed the southern candidate Bill Clinton, close polls had brought out unprecedented numbers. Early voting by mail or in pre-election day queues with a wait of up to six hours had already collated 2 million votes, with a further 3.2 million expected on the day itself.

That could bring in ballots from up to 90% of all registered voters - an astonishing proportion in a country that in previous years had set the standards of electoral indifference and apathy. If the US was once viewed around the world as the nation where elections counted for little, and politicians less, then yesterday changed that completely.

Over at the Ebenezer Baptist church - King's alma mater, where he sat at the feet of his pastor father and where his funeral was held in April 1968 after he was gunned down on the balcony of the Memphis Lorraine motel - a largely African American queue had formed at a polling station just a block away. All ages were represented. There was Horace Kelley, aged 75, who was born in the shadow of the Ebenezer and used to play softball in the grounds of the church with King's younger brother AD King. He said he was casting his vote to help the younger generation find a better future, because although racism was no longer overt on the streets, "you know it's still out there".

That younger generation was out in force too, confounding those who expected or feared a repeat of 2004 when the much-vaunted youth vote failed to gather the energy to make it to the polls. Even those younger voters said their electoral activism had been inspired in part by thoughts of those who came before them.

Ashley Romero, 18, was voting for the first time. She was educated at an African American Christian school, which would bring her frequently to the Martin Luther King national monument and instilled in her his message of hope.

Her vote, she said, would be cast partly in honour of King, as "without him we wouldn't be here today", and partly in honour of her grandfather, "Big Daddy". Now aged 90, a white man, he took the highly unusual step of marrying a black woman in Macon, and together they tolerated years of ridicule and harassment as a result. At the Guardian's request, Romero phoned her grandfather and talked to him. He was ill on election day, and in bed, but he told her he had already voted in early balloting. She asked him what the election meant for him. "After all my years, and everything I went through, this is the vote for change," he said.

By mid-morning all of America was awake. Records were being smashed with every state that opened the polls: 50% early voting in Colorado, more than 80% turnout in Nevada, scenes of people looping around whole blocks in St Louis, Missouri. Overall, voter turnout was expected to be up by more than 7%, bringing the total up to as many as 140 million.

By 7.30am, as many people had lined up to vote in Chappaqua, New York, home of the Clintons, than had at noon in 2004. In Pennsylvania, a state with no early voting, officials were braced for massive turnout that some feared could overcome the system. In Ohio, the ultimate battleground state, bottled water and circus entertainers were laid on to keep the patient crowds hydrated and happy.

In the first location to record a result, Dixville Notch in New Hampshire played its traditional part by counting all the votes ahead of the rest of the country, recording the first victory for a Democrat since 1968. Spirits soared among Obama supporters, only to fade as quickly when the number of ballots cast was announced: 21.

Across the country, thousands of lawyers, some operating gratis, others paid by both campaigns, were in place if things got dirty. But in the main the day proceeded without glitches or evidence of hanging chads. The electoral animal roared; but it did not bite.

Then, as if to underline the fact that this day was not about them, but about the millions who voted for them, the presidential candidates and their running mates went in to vote themselves, looking small and peculiarly powerless. "The journey ends," said Obama in Chicago accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Malia and Sasha. A thumbs-up from John McCain in Phoenix was matched by Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware. Only Sarah Palin, briefly back in her home town of Wasilla in Alaska, failed to respect the called-for brevity, seizing the opportunity for one last stump speech, perhaps with 2012 in mind. If Obama's 633 days of campaigning has seemed never-ending, wait for her epic race for the White House which may have begun yesterday.

In the heart of black Chicago, on the south side, not far from where the Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama worked as a community organiser, the question wasn't so much who they were going to vote for but whether they thought he would win.

"He's gonna win," said one woman as she left the polling station at the Israel Methodist Community church under a fluttering stars and stripes. "I have left it in God's hands and I'm sure he will deliver."

A few miles south in the more mixed suburb of Glenwood it took Harold Davis 40 minutes to get in and out. He usually votes in the evening but had arranged with a co-worker to cover for him in the morning and then return the favor in the evening. Davis, an African American who voted for Obama, was not convinced that his vote would be counted. "They stole it before so they can steal it again. I don't know what happens if they do it this time. But I think there'll be trouble."

A stocky, plain-spoken man in his 50s, he said he felt proud and excited to have cast a vote for a black president. "I never thought he would come this far. I really didn't. I think it's great for America.

Not just black America. But all of America ..."

And then his voice cracked. And then he cried. Walking away to compose himself he came back. "I'm sorry," he said. I never knew this thing went so deep."