But now with malls, restaurants and golf courses doing business on Sundays, and with politicians making stops at churches part of their vote-gathering routine, casting ballots on a Sunday didn't seem odd to those who used part of the afternoon to do so.

Annette and Alexander Coburn, pastors of a small church in Raleigh, attended a rally Sunday organized by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign after their morning service. About 200 people gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Gardens in Southeast Raleigh for a walk to voting booths about a mile away. For the Coburns, devotion to their ministry blended easily with their exercise in democracy. The young people in their church are excited about the election, and the Coburns have encouraged them to vote.

"You just want them to be involved," said Annette Coburn, 39.

Counties have experimented with Sunday hours in the eight years since the state first allowed them to set up early voting spots weeks before election days. Hundreds of Wake County voters cast ballots Sunday, reminded by campaign workers and news reports that the polls would be open. Wake was the only county in the Triangle with Sunday voting hours for the primary.

"Weekends are a time when people are available," said John Gilbert, chairman of the Wake elections board. "It's not like 40 years ago when we still had blue laws and nobody was open."

And it's not as if Sunday voting is a new idea, Gilbert said. Nations around the world have used Sundays for elections.

About one-third of the 370,000 Wake residents who cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election voted at one-stop sites or by mail, said Cherie Poucher, Wake's election director. "We didn't have long lines on Election Day," she said. "It was smooth."

She anticipates that early voting will serve the same purpose this spring, making May 6 lines shorter and poll workers less harried.

No splash in 2004

Durham voters barely noticed Sunday hours during the 2004 presidential election, said Mike Ashe, the county's elections director, so the county decided not to have them for this year's primary. Sunday hours will return for the early voting period before the general election in November, he said.

Even without Sunday hours this spring, Durham is setting records for early voting at this stage of the primary, Ashe said.

Orange County has never had Sunday voting hours, with elections officials figuring they could not afford to hire workers to staff polling sites. Officials are considering at least a few Sunday voting hours this fall, said Tracy Reams, Orange County election director.

The popularity of early voting can be seen in the numbers.

By Friday night, more than 121,500 people statewide had voted at one-stop locations, according to the State Board of Elections, and an additional 10,593 mailed ballots.

The Democratic presidential primary is fueling much of the interest this spring.

Obama's campaign has emphasized early voting with rallies, e-mail, Internet advertisements, and recorded telephone messages from his wife, Michelle. Obama has a one-stop early voting rally scheduled today in Chapel Hill. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her surrogates are reminding supporters of early voting at rallies and smaller gatherings.

Frank Rawls, 61, a retired government employee from Raleigh who voted for Clinton at the one-stop site at Pullen Park, said the Sunday hours were wonderfully convenient. "On May 6, the lines will be long," he said.

The Sunday hours allowed Sam and Pat Stowe to accompany their 18-year-old daughter, Charlotte, to the polls to cast her first ballot. Charlotte Stowe was eager to vote, especially because there was so much talk about the election in school. About a week ago, Stowe's English teacher at Enloe High School read the class a list of early voting sites.

"It was exciting to be able to do it, finally," she said.