Scratching out their votes in pencil in Coatesville, boldly switching from Republican to Democrat in West Chester, and screaming their candidates' names in a Center City shout-fest - voters here acted like the country depended on them to get it right.

"I feel like the eyes of the world are on Pennsylvania," West Chester lawyer Bill McSwain said. "It's neat."

In Northeast Philadelphia, a tide of gray washed into Rhawnhurst Elementary School - the older voters of Ward 56, Division 16.

Senior after senior moved gingerly toward the polls, among them 80-year-old Lorraine Tarnowski, who leaned heavily on a sturdy aluminum cane. Each step was an effort, but she was determined to participate in an American rite on a warm and important April morning.

Tarnowski came out for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. She likes the senator's health-care plan, vital now that Tarnowski is nursing a spinal injury and battling high blood pressure. But it's not just health care. It's food prices. And energy costs. And an economy that has slid from bad to worse.

"When you're a senior citizen," Tarnowski said, "you worry about everything."

It was clear yesterday that people were reacting to the buzz and pulse of a special, out-of-the-ordinary day.

In some cases, democracy got loud, like outside the Reading Terminal Market at 12th and Filbert Streets in Center City.

There, about 30 Clinton supporters encountered 20 supporters of Sen. Barack Obama in a noontime standoff.

Shouts of "O-bama!" were met with chants of "No-bama!" Meanwhile, Olga Vives, a National Organization for Women vice president from Virginia, added her own rhythmic variation: "Chelsea's mama, not Obama."

In Chester County, people voted old-school at the West End Fire Company in Coatesville: with paper ballots run through an optical scanner. To keep things simple, the county decided several years ago to stick with pencil and paper and stay off the high-tech road.

As though inspired by the old-style approach, at least one voter expressed a wistful wish for a different kind of candidate.

"I would have voted for Dr. King, if he was alive," said Theresa Christian, a 38-year-old African American bus driver.

But Christian had to cast her vote for a living candidate, not an icon from the past. She was emphatically for Clinton. "I'm not jumping on the Obama bandwagon because he is a black man," she said.

For Clarence Williams, a 74-year-old retiree and an African American, Obama is just fine. "He wants to change things, and that's the right thing to do," he said.

Equally engaged, though for a lost cause, Coatesville City Councilman Ed Simpson, a Republican, was flying the Ron Paul flag. "I believe in what he stands for," Simpson said, though he added that people were surprised to see Paul was even on the ballot.

Primary day is good for such surprises, big and small.

In West Chester, there was a shocker - at least for one family.

Steven Kistler Handzel, former Republican school board member, former Republican member of the Borough Council, former member of the executive committee of the Chester County Republican Party - not to mention the son and grandson of Republicans - cast his ballot for Obama at high noon.

Was it momentous? Was it strange? "It was cool," said Handzel, 53, as he emerged from the polling place at the West Chester Elks Club. "They said, 'Steve Handzel, Democrat,' and the earth didn't open up. It does feel historic."

While the primary proved important enough to inspire normally ambivalent people to overcome their natural voter torpor and kick in like good Americans, not everyone was moved to vote.

In blue-collar Bristol, Trish Duff, a middle-age woman who had stepped outside from her job at the Dollar Store to take a cigarette break, announced that she was pulling for Clinton to win, but wasn't pulling a lever. "I don't vote," Duff said. "I haven't voted - ever."

She stated it as a basic and unalterable fact of her life, and didn't think to offer a reason. On a day of hope and unparalleled civic involvement, it seemed almost like blasphemy.

Still, Duff said that she would like to see a woman become president, and that she thought Clinton could do something to help people struggling to pay their bills. "The economy is bad," Duff said. "The war is bad, but the economy is worse."

In Center City, Craig Quillen, a 55-year-old homeless man who had spent Monday night at an overnight cafe for the homeless at 32d and Spring Garden Streets, wouldn't be voting, either. But not because he didn't want to.

Holding a Clinton flyer as Obama supporters chanted near the Reading Terminal Market, Quillen said he was registered to vote in West Oak Lane, but had no way of getting there.

Disappointed that the candidates hadn't spoken about issues relevant to the homeless, he said he still would have voted for Clinton - if only someone had given him a ride.

"Women care more about what's happening in the world than men," he said. "Let's see what women can do."

So heartened was the stirred electorate that people seemed to come out of nowhere wanting to vote - needing to, to hear folks tell it.

"They're motivated to do this," said Darryl Lee, standing in front of a polling place in a no-name barbershop in West Philadelphia's Carroll Park neighborhood.

Referencing the steady stream of voters, Lee said he was seeing a mix of long-forgotten faces and plenty of new ones.

Lee, a 55-year-old poll inspector, wore an "Obama '08" button on his plaid jacket. He said he identified with the man's message of change. And change would be good, he said.

These days, people are compelled to leave the neighborhood just to buy basic items. "It didn't used to be that way," he said.

Voting everywhere was spirited, even at the firehouse in heavily Republican Ridley Township.

"I think Hillary has a lot of girlfriends," said Marion Devlin, a minority judge and a Democrat, who noted that many GOP women had changed their registration to vote for Clinton.

"I told my wife it might be the only chance she has to vote for a woman for president," said Republican election judge Ray Bunting, 66.

As balloting progressed at the Folsom Fire Company, things got even more heated. A loud fire siren went off and a large column of black smoke rose above the nearby Siter Square neighborhood.

Volunteer firefighters, summoned by the alarm, flooded the firehouse as startled voters looked on. The firefighters then rolled their trucks to the blaze, which had destroyed a single-family home.

No one was hurt, but for a few moments, the immediacy of a true emergency disrupted the rhythms of a seminal day.

Sure, people yesterday had to sidestep adversity to vote. But such was their need to participate in the democratic process that even the economically fortunate citizens of Jenkintown risked schmutz on their well-heeled shoes to mark a ballot.

Voters coughed their way through the dust in the construction zone outside the polls at the high school.

"People are finding their way," said Theresa Cooper, a Democratic poll worker.

In the less tony precincts of North Philadelphia, voters faced a different set of impediments: a trio of dragonlike papier-mache masks hanging over the polling booths at the offices of Congreso de Latinos Unidos, a Latino nonprofit.

The traditional Puerto Rican totems, sharp-toothed and fierce, didn't frighten 18-year-old Sarah Gaston, nine months and three days pregnant. Poll workers applauded when she revealed it was her first-ever vote.

"Obama and Hillary are bringing the truth back, and they promise better things," said Gaston, who wouldn't reveal her choice. "I just had to come out and vote.

"I felt like this was important. You know what I mean?"

About This Story

Contributing were Inquirer staff writers Jeff Gammage, Kia Gregory, Jennifer Lin, Nancy Petersen and Mari A. Schaefer.

at 215-854-4969 or alubrano@phillynews.com.