Billie Kimber, a Greensboro, North Carolina daycare center owner, went to the polls Saturday morning to cast her Democratic Primary ballot in early voting, and then she said she woke up others and took them to the polls to do the same.

Fueled by a heavy flow of early votes and large numbers of black voters, Sen. Barack Obama carried North Carolina Tuesday in the Democratic primary. Voting was strong too among blacks in Indiana, although the results for Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton remained close at midnight.

At her polling place in Hammond, Indiana, Diana Sloan said there were long lines of people when she went to vote.

“One of the poll workers told me the box went 90 percent for Obama,” Sloan, a teacher, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “People were voting who had never voted before. Mothers were bringing their children. They were excited. They have a reason to vote,” she said.

The six in 10 whites in both states supporting Clinton were similar to her margin over Obama among whites nationally so far, showing he continues to have trouble cutting into her support from those voters. Even so, his lopsided backing from blacks meant he didn't need white majorities Tuesday to be competitive.

Nine in 10 blacks in both states were backing Obama -- an even stronger margin than usual for a group he has dominated. That proved decisive in North Carolina, where they comprised about a third of voters -- double their proportion in Indiana.

Some polling locations in Indiana ran short on ballots as voters flocked to Indiana's first meaningful presidential primary in 40 years.

The Marion County Clerk's Office had to print several thousand extra Democratic ballots due to increased demand in traditionally Republican voting areas of Indianapolis.

At a precinct near South Bend, inspector Diana Hampton said that more people had voted by late morning than had voted during the entire day four years ago.

Voters across the state cast more than 173,000 absentee ballots through Monday. That's more than three times the number of early ballots cast turned in for the 2004 presidential primary. About 76 percent of those seeking to vote absentee asked for Democratic ballots.

In North Carolina, early voting and Election Day voting was also higher than in previous years.

“The turnout is historic. More than a half million people cast early votes,” said Claude W. Barnes, a professor of political science at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro.

“This is the beginning of a new coalition. People are in economic misery. They are voting their pocketbooks,” Barnes told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

North Carolina was hit hard in its textile industry by NAFTA, an agreement approved in during President Bill Clinton’s administration that resulted in more American jobs being shipped to other countries, Barnes said. “Economic issues cross the racial and socio-economic spectrum,” he said.

David Street, a Washington, D.C., native and president of the Student Government Association at A&T, said he voted early and chose Obama. “I like his plan for healthcare,” Street told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “It’s obvious we need a change in this country.”

On Tuesday, he spent the day driving a van to get students who live off campus to the polls to vote. There is also a polling place onsite at the campus’ student center.

North Carolina officials say Tuesday’s primary turnout had been steady, but not especially heavy.

The state's election chief says few problems were been reported. He counts about a dozen instances of voting machine problems. That's a sharp drop compared to the 120 reports two years ago.

The Election Protection Coalition reported getting about 800 calls on Tuesday from North Carolina and Indiana on the Voter Protection Hotline. Election Protection and its partners form a large non-partisan voter protection coalition to respond to voting problems through a comprehensive voter protection program at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
 
"As this historic primary season has progressed, record numbers of voters have turned out to exercise their fundamental right to vote," Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, said in a prepared statement. “It is unfortunate, however, that many of these eligible voters were disenfranchised and unable to cast a ballot. In state after state, including both North Carolina and Indiana, we've seen eligible voters lose their right to vote because of poorly trained poll workers, problems with voting machines and inaccurate voter registration rolls."
 
"Today, Election Protection volunteers spoke to thousands of voters. We protected voting rights by answering questions, resolving problems and advocating on behalf of voters. We learned that students, elderly persons, women, persons of color and even nuns are at risk of disenfranchisement," Brennan Center lawyer Myrna Perez, said in a prepared statement.
 
According to the Election Protection Coalition, one of the most closely watched issues going into the primaries today was Indiana's photo identification law, which required voters to present a government issued ID before casting a vote. Election Protection received a significant number of calls and complaints regarding the law, which was recently upheld by the Supreme Court.
 
Here are some examples reported from the coalition:

• A freshman student at St. Mary's College in South Bend, Indiana called the coalition hotline after she was denied the right to vote because she only possessed an ID from a private college. The poll workers, nuns at a local convent, were trying to help the young student through her problem. While doing so -- and prior to the student's incident -- they realized that some of their fellow nuns were also prevented from voting because of Indiana's restrictive photo identification law. In fact, they later realized that several floors of retired nuns in their convent would not be able to vote in the Indiana primary because they had no state-issued ID cards.
• Students also experienced problems in both states. In Indiana, students at Purdue University weren't able to use their state-issued photo IDs to vote because the cards lack an expiration date, while in North Carolina multiple students who had registered by the deadline were still denied the right to vote.
• There were multiple reports of voting machine problems in Indiana, including from a school teacher who had to leave without casting a ballot because he had to get to school before classes started. Some voters were not offered paper ballots when machines went down, and countless voters left without casting a ballot.
• In North Carolina, poll workers at a local precinct announced that there were no ballots, and voters were sent home. Election Protection followed up and discovered that the polling place had the ballots in a box which had not been opened.

Barnes said he did not hear of many problems in North Carolina, but mostly saw "more energy and excitement" among voters. His concern, now, he said, is more about the future.
 
“It’s great to see the large number of new voters and young voters participating in the election,” Barnes said. “But unless this new energy is translated into a solid movement to throw all the bums out and focus on real change in the American political economy, whomever is elected will not make a dime's worth of difference.”

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Associated Press contributed to this story.