ALBANY -- New York voters who waited in lines that snaked down city blocks and inside suburban schools Tuesday said they were excited to take part in a historic election.

"I never thought I would live to see this," said Roger Clark, a Barack Obama supporter who showed up in his wheelchair, in the dark, at 5:45 a.m. to vote at Manhattan's Times Square. "It's a miracle."

Voters began showing up at the polls at 4 a.m. in New York City, creating lines of hundreds from Crown Heights in Brooklyn to Manhattan's Upper East Side. New York City's Board of Elections dispatched 34,000 workers at 1,371 polling places to handle the heavy flow, said spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez-Rivera.

Voters said the stakes were too high to stay home.

"It's awesome, should be like this every time," said William Ward, a 33-year-old computer programmer who voted in Midtown Manhattan.

The scene of packed polling places was replayed across the state, from the bedroom community of Wilton near Saratoga Springs to Westchester County. John Ritch, a poll worker in Chappaqua, said they had as many people come through by 7:30 a.m. Tuesday as they had by noon in 2004.

"We need to get the Republicans out of the White House," said Maggie Christ of Chappaqua. "Mr. Obama has a chance to be a really, really great president. He has a calm about him. He has a vast intelligence. He has a real potential to make change in the country for the better."

Many other voters like Bella Procida of Long Island said they were supporting McCain. "McCain's going to win," she said. "He's gotta win."

Still Obama was comfortably ahead in pre-election polls and was expected to pick up the state's 31 electoral votes. Some down-ticket races offered more drama — especially a handful hotly contested of state Senate seats whose outcome could determine whether Democrats snatch control of the state Senate away from Republicans. The GOP held a 31-29 Senate edge going into the elections.

"I think we need half and half," said Eleanor Herte, a registered Republican who voted in the East Farmingdale firehouse on Long Island, "because somebody's got to argue the other side."