WASHINGTON - Two senior Democratic lawmakers asked Wednesday for a congressional investigation into long Election Day lines, including some that took hours to get through and continued even past midnight.

In a letter to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, the lawmakers said one nonpartisan voter hot line received nearly 1,400 reports of "excessively long lines" from 32 states, including the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Reps. Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee , and John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee , asked the GAO to investigate how much the lines affected minority, young or first-time voters; find out what caused the lines; and recommend solutions.

"While it seems most Americans endured this wait where possible, it is clear that in some cases citizens left the polling places without having voted when personal responsibilities or health concerns made waiting exceedingly difficult," the letter said.

The GAO already has started an investigation into the Nov. 2 election, including the handling of provisional ballots, voter registration and voting machine problems. A spokeswoman from the GAO didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

© 2005 The Associated Press

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