Election officials throughout central and western Maine were wearing smiles Wednesday, and it wasn’t simply because Election Day was over. It was because of the way the day passed.

Said Auburn City Clerk Mary Lou Magno: “We had a good election.”

Her peers said largely the same. And all were happy to see voter interest surge, something evidenced by large turnouts in virtually all area communities.

Magno said that at 83 percent, the city’s turnout was at or near a record. The city also registered 577 new voters on Election Day.

The voting process itself was so smooth she called it “flawless.”

There were some lines at times, she noted, but Auburn voters never faced long waits. “We had put up extra booths in each precinct. We tried to accommodate voters to help them get in and out quickly,” Magno said.

Auburn also got its vote totals out quickly. First returns were available by 10 p.m., Magno said, and the last precincts had reported by about 11 p.m.

That included counting 3,037 absentee ballots.

Credit “good crews” she said, a comment heard time and again from city and town clerks who had only praise for election volunteers.

Across the Androscoggin, Lewiston clerk Kathy Montejo called Tuesday “a very smooth day.”

Polls “were crowded right at the opening,” she noted, but once that initial knot of voters cast ballots, polling places proved busy but not overcrowded.

Few voters had to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes, she said, and many commented about how quickly the process went.

Lewiston’s turnout – 69 percent – was the highest she could document going back to 1998. The city doesn’t have records available before that, she said. “It could have been higher for the Kennedy election,” she said, but couldn’t document that.

Ballot processing was quick and easy, she added, with returns declared at 9:41 p.m. and available on the city’s Web site by 10 p.m.

In Sabattus, an estimated 70 percent of voters visited the polls, said Town Clerk Robin Dulac. “That’s very high,” she said, but noted that since Tuesday was her first election, she didn’t have comparison numbers handy.

“Things went very well” overall, Dulac added. She was particularly pleased to see voters lined up at the polls waiting for them to open.

Once polls closed, the count went quickly, Dulac said, helped by having additional workers on hand.

Not every town had nearly instant returns, however.

In Fryeburg, where hand-counting of ballots remains the rule, results weren’t available until 2:45 a.m., said Town Clerk Theresa Shaw.

Fryeburg’s turnout was of record proportions. The town had 1,200 voters in the last presidential election, said Shaw. This year the turnout was 1,762 voters.

In Andover, Town Clerk Elaine Morton said she had four sets of ballot counters working, but they tried a new “silent system” of tallying ballots. It didn’t work, Morton said, and they ended up recounting the 550 ballots cast in the town by a tried-and-true method.

“I think we’ll go back to the old system,” Morton said Wednesday.

As in other communities, Andover found absentee ballots popular. The town counted 60 absentee ballots Tuesday. “That was way over what we got in past years. Usually, we’re lucky if we had 12.”

In Wilton, Town Clerk Linda Jellison said approximately 75 percent of that town’s voters cast ballots Tuesday. Wilton had also distributed a record number of absentee ballots – 525 – and saw about 475 of those returned. Jellison said she has never seen so many absentee ballots requested or cast.

About 125 new voters registered in Wilton for the election.