In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, New Yorkers headed to the polls Tuesday where long queues were reported at polling places across the city.

"I came and vote here at around 9 am," a Chinese-born voter, who declined to be named, told Xinhua at one of the polling stations in New York Chinatown. "I've lived here for more than twenty years, and I've never seen so many voters in this polling place before, perhaps because some people were relocated to vote here as they were hardly hit by Hurricane Sandy."

Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed an executive order allowing any New Yorker registered to vote to cast their ballots at any polling site in the state, not just their assigned ones. Cuomo said people who have been displaced by the storm should not lose the ability to vote.

Sandy, which killed more than 100 people in 10 states in the United States, hit the metropolitan New York region especially hard. Nearly one million people have still lived without electricity as of Tuesday morning, according to Department of Energy statistics.

The Board of Elections has set up "super sites" in Brooklyn and Queens with as many as nine polling places combined into one, while the MTA is running shuttle buses in the Rockaways, Coney Island and Staten Island, to get voters to the polls.

In Chicago, Illinois, which polls suggest is a safe state for President Barack Obama, five election judges are required to show up at 5 a.m. (1000 GMT) Tuesday at the 25th precinct polling place, 3rd Ward, to get everything prepared for the voting beginning at 6 a.m..

Lots of voters got up very early to cast their ballots, election judge on the site Amy Li told Xinhua, "however, a lot of voters are somewhat confused because of the two pieces of more than 50-cm-long paper ballots."

"Why there are two ballots? This is the same exact question I am asked by the voters today," she said. And lots of voters do not even know who the candidates are on the list.

A Filipino-American couple told Xinhua that they prefer to cast the paper ballot because "clicking on the voting machine is just like guided by a programmed software, we want to make sure that our ballots will work. "

Chicago, known as "Windy City," is famous for its rich immigration heritage and cultural diversity. In order to facilitate the voting operation, there are some posters written in Chinese.

Voting hours in Chicago lasted until 7 p.m. Tuesday when the ballots would begin to be counted. According to Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, there are 1,365,000 registered voters in the 2012 general election.

Obama plans to hold his election-night rally at Chicago's McCormick Place convention center, a move aimed at easing concerns over weather and security.

Silicon valley engineer's dilemma

In Silicon Valley, a high-tech hub in the U.S. west, for software engineer Alison Chaiken, the unfolding presidential election has proven to be a touch choice.

In an interview with Xinhua months before the Election Day, Chaiken, who voted for Obama with "reluctance" four years ago, said she hadn't decided whom to vote at that moment as both the incumbent President and Republican challenger Mitt Romney appear to her as "reasonably competent overall."

Chaiken, 50, was born on the East Coast of the United States and received her Ph.D. in device physics from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

She moved to the West Coast 20 years ago for jobs in Silicon Valley, and has undergone a career change from physicist to software engineer during the last 4 years.

"Since there is not much silicon in Silicon Valley any more, physics is shrinking rapidly here," she explained.

"The transition has been quite grueling and is not quite complete, although I am starting to feel secure and competent in my new field, where employment prospects are much better than the old one."

Chaiken said historically she is unimpressed by the Democrat's approach to technology policy.

"The Democratic Party tends to select certain technologies as winners and fund them heavily, but they lack the technical expertise to pick the right solutions to back," she said.

"Rather than give incentives to industry to improve energy efficiency, they foolishly subsidized biofuels and photovoltaics. The energy policy unfortunately typifies the Democratic Party approach to technology," she noted.

What made it harder to choose is that Chaiken doesn't see any prospect that either Party will back the kind of patent and copyright reform that the technology industry needs.

However, as the Election Day has arrived, she finally made her decision.

"As I stared at the ballot this morning, I decided to vote for Obama because Romney's budget plan worries me," Chaiken told Xinhua in an email early Tuesday.

"Romney has a better technology and energy policy, so I had a hard time making up my mind," she admitted. 

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