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Raleigh scanners are having trouble handling ballots that are wet from rain dripping off of soaked voters.

Raleigh, NC (CNN) - A soggy and delayed start to the voting day in a Raleigh, North Carolina, precinct, after some confusion at the polling station. Wake County Board of Elections director Cherie Poucher reported there were problems this morning at the Barwell Road Community Center (formerly the Ebenezer Church Road precinct). She confirmed that the chief judge forgot to take the ballots out of her grandson's truck when being dropped off this morning. The elections director says the truck drove away, and the judge wasn't able to track down her grandson. The Board of Elections delivered new ballots and voting began at 7:06am, 36 minutes behind schedule. Approximately 300 people were waiting in line.

"When the board meets today, I expect that they will vote to keep the precinct open an additional 36 minutes," Poucher added.

Rain has also been a factor this morning in Wake County, North Carolina. Soaking voters dripped water onto their ballots as they were filling them out, causing problems for the optical scanners.

"When we put the ballot through the scanner it is soggy and doesn't go through," Poucher said. "One ripped and got stuck when the voter tried to get it out." The scanner then had to be taken out of service.

Poucher said voters with soggy ballots were being asked to deposit them in the emergency ballot box. When they are dried and the scanners are back up and running, the ballots will be put through the optical scanners, the official added.

Poucher said that voters will not be inconvenienced because of this situation.

Dole's chances of holding onto her Senate seat look precarious.

(CNN) - If the Democrats reach their goal of capturing 60 seats in the Senate, North Carolina may be a major reason why.

Freshman Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole is trailing her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, by nine points, 53 percent to 44 percent, a new CNN/Time/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Friday suggests. Hagan had a smaller lead in other recent polls in North Carolina.

An already bitter contest turned uglier this week, when an ad by Dole's campaign suggested Hagan was "godless." The Dole campaign says it based its charge on Hagan's attendance at a fundraiser in the home of an advisor to the Godless Americans' political action committee, a group that promotes rights for atheists.

Hagan, a state senator from Greensboro, returned fire, saying she was "absolutely appalled" by the ad, calling it "politics of the worst kind." She also filed a lawsuit to prevent the ad from running.

The poll in North Carolina was conducted before Dole's campaign commercial began airing.

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