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.
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