Tuesday's election ran smoothly with good voter turnout, area county officials said Wednesday.
"Every time I talked to them (at the precincts) they said it was steady," said Alice Schulz, Stark County auditor. "It just took a little longer, because with a primary you have all the city stuff, and a lot of times they don't have candidates so they have to count all the write-ins."
Schulz said information from the last precinct came in at about 9:30 Tuesday evening.
A hot-button issue on Tuesday's ballot was whether the county should change from Mountain to Central time. The issue was defeated with 3,790 no votes and 1,366 yes votes.
Stark County voter turnout before canvassing stood at about 5,243 votes, Schulz said. In 2000, the county drew in 7,014 votes, which was the last time the issue of changing time zones was on the ballot, Schulz said.
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This was also the year George W. Bush and Al Gore were on the ballot for the presidency.
Voters could only vote for one party for state elections and about 137 "crossovers," or those who voted for candidates in more than one party, came through. Those ballots were not counted.
Election night remained pretty quiet and things ran smoothly in Slope County, as well, Auditor Lorrie Buzalsky said, but it took a little longer to get results, due to the distance between towns.
"The biggest thing with us is that it's almost an hour drive from Marmarth," Buzalsky said. "We use all electronic except for the city of Amidon (which are hand counted), but you're only talking less than 20 ballots."
Voters wrote-in 44 candidates for three open posts on the New England Park Board, which had no listed candidates, Hettinger County Auditor Roy Steiner said.
"We've never had that many positions open in one area," he said.
Shawn Wolf had the most votes with 32, John Plaggemeyer had 19 and Todd Fitterer received 13, according to Hettinger County information.
