Long lines nationwide, reports of voter intimidation, and ballot machine problems in three states cause troubles on Election Day

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Despite Donald Trump's continued skepticism that the election was on the up and up, few voters who went to the polls Tuesday encountered problems — and even then, most issues involved the usual machine breakdowns and long lines.

The run-up to the vote was fraught, with unsupported claims by the Republican presidential candidate of a rigged election and fears that hackers might attack voting systems. 

He reiterated his claims on Election Day, after his campaign announced it was seeking an investigation in the battleground state of Nevada over reports that some early voting locations had allowed people to join lines to vote after polls were scheduled to close.

Asked on Fox News if he would accept Tuesday's results, Trump continued to demur.

'We're going to see how things play out,' Trump said. 'I want to see everything honest.'

Voters line up in crowds at a polling site to cast their ballots, Tuesday Nov. 8, 2016, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in New York. New York voters will decide which political party controls the state Senate this election

Hundreds of Temple University students wait in an hour-long line to vote during the U.S. presidential election in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. November 8, 2016

The run-up to the vote was fraught, with unsupported claims by the Republican presidential candidate of a rigged election. Most of the problems were routine 

Concerns of voter intimidation and fraud led to a flurry of lawsuits in the run-up to Election Day, and new voter regulations in more than a dozen states also held the potential to sow confusion at polling places.

But at least in the early going, most of the problems were routine — the kinds of snags that come every four years, like the lines, machines not working properly, and issues with ballots or voter rolls. 

One New Jersey voter reported waiting three hours because there were too few voting machines at her polling place in Jersey City.

In Texas, a computer used by election clerks malfunctioned at a polling place inside a high school in suburban Houston, forcing officials to briefly divert voters to another polling place more than two miles away. Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham said the malfunctioning console was later replaced with a backup and voting resumed.

Andrea Patience, a 50-year-old pharmacy technician, was among those standing in line when the computer malfunctioned. She said she waited an hour for it to be fixed. Patience said as many as 100 people were standing in line at the time, and about half of them left.

Voters line up to cast their ballots on Election Day at Tabb High School in York Co., Va., Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016

People wait in line as polls open at Marmalade Library Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Salt lake City. Utah's mostly Mormon, mostly Republican voters are going to the polls Tuesday to determine if the GOP's five-decade winning streak in presidential elections will remain intact or be snapped.

'There were a lot of upset people,' Patience said. 'I don't know if they will come back later or decide not to vote.'

Election officials in Utah said voting machine problems in the southern part of the state forced poll workers early in the day to switch from an electronic check-in system to paper roll books. A computer problem in Durham County, North Carolina — a Democratic stronghold in a state that has been a key battleground in the presidential race — triggered long lines when election officials had to rely on a paper check-in process.

At least five precincts in North Carolina experienced similar problems and switched over the paper poll books 'out of an abundance of caution', Patrick Gannon of the North Carolina State Board of Elections.  

There were also sporadic reports of people in North Carolina who said they were not put on the voter rolls despite registering to vote through the Division of Motor Vehicles. 

In response to these issues, state officials were granted an extra hour, and poll will close at 8.30pm.

The question this year was whether problems would be widespread and indicate a pattern of fraud or voter intimidation.

Trump had suggested that Philadelphia was among those places ripe for voter fraud. The city's district attorney, Seth Williams, said in mid-afternoon that his office had investigated 68 complaints about voter intimidation, broken machines or other problems, a number consistent with the past three presidential elections. He said all had proven unfounded.

But at least two people in Butler County, Pennsylvania reported that every time they selected a Republican candidate using an automated voting machine, it would switch to the Democrat ticket.

'I went back, pressed Trump again. Three times I did this, so then I called one of the women that were working the polls over. And she said you must be doing it wrong. She did it three times and it defaulted to Hillary every time,' Bobbie Lee Hawranko told CBS.

Authorities confirmed there was a glitch involving two of the machines in Clinton Township and later said the problem had been resolved.

But Hawranko did not seem convinced and said: 'I would like to know that my vote was for Trump, and not for Hillary.' 

A similar problem occurred on the other side of the state in Lebanon County, with voters reporting their straight Republican selections appeared as a line of Democratic tickets. 

Voters were able to change their ballots, Michael Anderson of the county's BOE said.

Poll workers in Pennsylvania were reportedly asking voters which candidate they supported, and voters waiting in line were shouting at each other, said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a grassroots group.

There were similar reports in Florida. In Broward County, Florida, two election clerks at a polling site were fired after they clashed over how to resolve complaints of voter intimidation, local media reported.

In Jacksonville, Florida, one man refused to leave a polling place when he was asked, she said. 

And in Hoboken, New Jersey, the city's own mayor reported that she was asked for an ID, which is a violation of voting laws in that state.

'I just got asked for ID to vote in my polling location at Boys & Girls Club. This is not ok Hudson County Board of Elections!' tweeted Dawn Zimmer. 

In the last week alone, Democrats went to court in seven states seeking to halt what they claim were efforts by Republicans and the Trump campaign to deploy a network of poll watchers hunting for voter fraud. Republicans have disputed claims they are planning to intimidate voters, and judges largely found no evidence of efforts to suppress voters.

Pictured, voters in Phoenix, Arizona, waiting for the polls to open at dawn on Election Day

While there were concerns that the heated rhetoric of the campaign would lead to confrontations at the polls, only a few minor skirmishes were reported (pictured, voters in VA)

While there were concerns that the heated rhetoric of the campaign would lead to confrontations at the polls, only a few minor skirmishes were reported. In southeastern Michigan, authorities said an argument outside a polling place between a woman supporting presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and another backing Trump led a man to shove one of the women and spurred others to join in. No arrests were made.

A county clerk in East Lansing, Michigan, reported an incident of 'voter intimidation' to the police after reports of a man who tried to prevent two women in hijabs from voting.

Ron Fox, who was also trying to cast his ballot at the Shaarey Zedek synogogue on Tuesday, said the man did not have a sticker identifying him as an election official.

He said the man appeared polite and non-confrontational, but told Mother Jones: ' I would say that there was at least some profiling going on as the two women in question were the only ones he singled out while I was in line.' 

Once again, battleground state Pennsylvania, which 

A coalition of more than 100 civil rights and voting rights groups reported that more than half of the complaints received in the morning about voter harassment came from Pennsylvania. Those included voters being asked to provide specific forms of identification that are not required, and Hispanic voters finding no Spanish speakers to assist them, which also occurred in Florida. 

This is the first presidential election in which a key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act was not in place. A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down a portion of the law that had required certain states and jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to receive pre-approval from the U.S. Department of Justice for any election law change. This allowed a number of states, most led by Republican legislatures and governors, to enact strict voter ID laws and reduce early voting.

Legal challenges to some of those voter ID laws have led to a multitude of court rulings in recent months that blocked or struck down some provisions while upholding or reinstating others. That triggered concerns of misinformation among voters, election officials and poll workers.

The Supreme Court ruling also prompted the Justice Department to send fewer trained election observers to polling places around the country than in previous years, with the reduction likely to diminish the department's ability to detect voter intimidation and other potential problems.

Meanwhile, state election officials were guarding against any attempt to breach their systems. Previously, some 33 states accepted an offer from the federal government to check their voter databases and reporting systems for vulnerabilities after hackers attempted to access systems in two states over the summer.