ATLANTA -- The lengthy lines that greeted voters in metro Atlanta last week yielded Tuesday to short waits in most precincts as millions of Georgia residents headed to the polls to cast their ballots.

Still, election protection groups reported receiving more than 1,300 phone calls, and poll workers were bracing for a rush of voters expected to head to the polls after 5 p.m.

Election supervisors said nearly all of Georgia's more than 3,000 voting precincts opened on time Tuesday morning, and that wait times by midday averaged just under an hour.

Voters at some spots in metro Atlanta, though, faced lines of more than two hours to cast their ballots. And there were hiccups at a handful of polling sites, with reports of computer glitches that slowed lines and downed voting machines.

Around 8:30 a.m., voting machines at Cleveland Elementary in Atlanta lost power. Officials said at first, it was three machines. Then, an hour later, 11 more went down. Officials said the problem was the machines were all operating off the same outlet.

Power was eventually restored, but it delayed voting time. Many voters waited four hours.

By 12:30 p.m., all 14 machines were back up.

Long lines were a familiar sight in Georgia last week during advance voting, when higher-than-expected turnout and scattered technical problems forced voters to wait as long as eight hours.

But Georgia's early voting strategy is expected to relieve the crush of voters descending on Georgia's more than 3,000 polling precincts Tuesday. More than 2 million people already have voted, accounting for 36 percent of Georgia's 5.6 million voters.

"The lines are not as long as we thought they would be overall," said Clare Schexnyder of Georgia Election Protection, a voting rights group. "And the early voting definitely put a real dent in the problems we would have seen."

Polls in Georgia opened at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m., although some voters could still be waiting deep into the night.

"Our plan is to vote every voter that's in line in the time period that's allotted," said Annie Bright, elections director of Clayton County. "We're doing anything we can to get them all voted. Even if it takes all night."

Georgia Election Protection reported it has received more than 1,000 complaints from voters, many of them calling about problems concerning voter registration. The Georgia Attorney General's Office, which also runs a voter hot line, said it had received more than 40 phone calls.

"It seems to be going smooth from our end," said Russ Willard, a spokesman for the office.

Metro Atlanta sites were readying for a rush hour crush. In suburban Cobb County, for instance, officials expected lines that averaged around 30 minutes to stretch at least twice as long at some precincts.

"What's important is that we're here with the voters until that last ballot is cast," said Robert Quigley, a county spokesman.

Gwinnett County officials, meanwhile, also were grappling with a ballot mishap caused by a software glitch that was discovered a few weeks ago. The ovals where voters mark their choices were too thick for optical scanning machines to read. The county reprinted 19,000 ballots to fix the problem, but more than 10,000 had already been returned.

Some 200 workers sitting in pairs in a warehouse were transferring votes from each flawed ballot to a new one, and two more workers are verifying that the votes match, said county spokesman Joe Sorenson. He said both ballots will be kept in case of an audit.

One frustrated Fulton County voter said he waited more than an hour in line at a polling precinct, but before he could cast his ballot he was told he had already voted. Dr. Robert Fryer said he assured poll workers he had yet to cast a ballot, but was still forced to fill out a provisional ballot.

"From my point of view, the election is in question," said Fryer, a dentist who attempted to vote in north Fulton County. "It throws it into doubt in my mind. The election is tainted to say the least."

Polling spots elsewhere around the state featured shorter lines. Voters in Albany waited 15 minutes in some spots, and polls in Savannah had a 30 minute wait before the lunch rush hour. In Athens, voters waited just a few minutes around late morning to cast their ballot.

"I've got a big test in like three hours and I was like, if it's a four-hour wait, I can't do it. But it was so fast and easy," said Courtney Mundt, a 20-year-old student who supported Republican John McCain. "I didn't want it to be, 'If it were one more vote, McCain would have won.' You hear too many stories about that one more vote."

Both political parties have dispatched hundreds of election monitors and attorneys to voting sites, and Georgia Election Protection also is planning to deploy more than 600 volunteers. And Secretary of State Karen Handel's office said it has sent 150 monitors around the state to help resolve any problems.

Handel, a Republican, has been under fire by critics who say she should call for longer voting hours.

The Democratic Party of Georgia's chair proclaimed a voting "crisis," and other prominent Democrats have called for federal intervention to clear the way for extended hours, more voting machines and more staff.

Handel, though, has accused the critics of "grandstanding" and noted that any changes to election procedure first need to be cleared by the Department of Justice.

Voters, meanwhile, seem to be crossing their fingers in hopes the day will go off without a hitch.

"I would hope that we can act in an adult, responsible way," said Millie Rogers, 61, a Marietta Republican who waited three hours to vote last week. "This is a right we have, and I hope everyone will behave in an appropriate way so nothing will happen."