LONG WAIT NOT A PROBLEM

At 3 p.m. on Election Day, the line of voters at St. Paul & St. Andrew's Methodist Church, on West 86th Street, filled an entire block. Voters, many on cell phones or reading magazines, waited patiently as they moved from the end of the line on Broadway to the church's entrance on West End Avenue. According to a member of Community Free Democrats, who had spent several hours handing out flyers near St. Andrew's, the line had been consistently long all day. Over at the Mickey Mantle School on West 82nd Street, the line was much shorter, but poll worker Marcella Smalls said that the morning had been very busy. Voters started lining up at the school at 5:30 a.m., half an hour before polls in New York City opened. "We had to let them in before we even finished setting up," said Smalls, who has been a poll worker for 17 years. Nothing could deter Upper West Sider Ilene Marcus from voting. "I walked on crutches to get here," said Marcus, who came with her mother and daughter. Luckily for Marcus, there was room to sit while she was waiting her turn. Had she waited, Marcus might have had to stand, as election officials were expecting the polling site to be standing-room-only later that evening. "It usually doesn't get busier until the end of the night," said a poll worker at the door.