Record numbers on the first day of early voting in Travis County and officials stress that almost everything is going smoothly, but the clerk says one person is trying to keep some votes from counting.

Voters lined up even before the polls opened Monday morning.

"This is a really big vote for the future," voter Billy McNealy said.

"It just feels like this is really an historic time," voter Alison Faber-Brock said.

Erica Prosser should have shared in the excitement. Instead, she's involved in a criminal investigation.

"It was very upsetting," Prosser said.

Prosser went to the polling place at Randall's near Ben White and Manchaca in South Austin. She says a nicely dressed man in his 30's, clipboard in hand, was stopping people on the way in asking if they support Barack Obama. He then gave erroneous voting instructions.

"He was clearly letting younger people walk by him and he was pulling aside older women," Prosser said.

Prosser says the man was telling people to select both a straight party ballot, and vote for Obama.

"The instructions he's giving them will cancel their vote for their candidate and he's deliberately giving misinformation," Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said.

After an election judge confronted him the man left in an older model red Chevy Impala that witnesses say was covered in republican stickers.

"These are state jail felonies the kinds of infractions he's done. It is serious and of course if I can figure out who it is we will take appropriate action," DeBeauvoir said.

Until the man is caught, Debeauvoir has this advice for voters.

"Voters can put a stop to this in a minute. Any time someone walks up to you in a polling place get their name call them out right there."