McCain's campaign complained that precincts that were supposed to be open were closed. The Arizona senator demanded "a full investigation" after discovering the Pond Branch voting precinct in Greenville was closed. Campaign manager Rick Davis said there were no plans to sue, however.

In Washington, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said representatives of the civil rights group had received complaints Saturday morning that some polling places in heavily black areas were closed. He said he would send a representative to South Carolina after the polls closed to investigate the charges.

"We want to take a look at these complaints to see if any violations occurred," Mfume said at the NAACP's annual meeting.

Despite the consolidations, turnout at many polling places was phenomenal.

Cam Underwood, who has helped run the Republican primary for more than 25 years, was working at the William J. Clark Middle School polling station in Orangeburg south of Columbia.

"I've seen people today voting that I haven't seen in a long time," she said. In the primary four years ago, 339 people cast ballots at William J. Clark. Underwood said almost 400 had voted by 1 p.m. this year.

"We just had to call for more ballots," she said.

By early afternoon, 10 polling places in the Columbia area were running low on ballots because of high turnout, said Shell Suber, GOP county chairman, who was getting more copied at Kinko's.

"We're keeping very strict tabs on how many extra ballots each place gets to verify votes," he said.

Paper ballots were used in 44 of the state's 46 counties.

The state does not control political parties' primaries in South Carolina.

In response to a lawsuit, the state Republican Party promised last week to open all state-designated polling places and, if necessary, pay state election workers to staff them. Two Democrats had sued and complained to the Justice Department that the GOP's practice of not opening all polling places, especially in predominantly black areas, violated federal law.

The consent order was approved Monday by a three-judge federal panel scheduled to hear the case.

"I think it was clear -- the court has already settled this," McCain said. "I don't know what to say. It's very disappointing."

State GOP Executive Director J. Sam Daniels said the party opened 1,429 polling places out of 1,752 that normally operate in a general election. That's almost twice as many as in the 1996 primary.

But 23 of 139 precincts were consolidated in Greenville County that were to be open after some volunteers did not pick up their ballots and ballot boxes Friday, Daniels said.

Some precincts were closed elsewhere in the state, but "not to the degree that it has happened in Greenville," Daniels said.

In Columbia, more than 100 people showed up at their regular voting spot, Virginia Wingard Memorial United Methodist Church, only to find signs telling them to go to a middle school. There were no directions or an address.

Richard Jackson, who was doing some handiwork for the church, said he spent much of the morning helping lost voters. A church pastor finally wrote directions on signs.

"I think he was tired of telling people where to go," Jackson said.