Cheers to Maine voters, who really turned out in force for Tuesday’s election — despite all the predictions by public officials, pundits and editors of a low turnout.

The unexpected turnout made the primary results decisive, definitive and deafening.

Good.

According to a story in the Kennebec Journal, the GOP turnout was the strongest for a gubernatorial primary in almost 60 years, with 48 percent of registered Republicans voting.

The Dems produced 37 percent of voters at the polls, so something was driving people to cast ballots.

Numbers are funny things, though, and while we can now accurately say what the turnout figures are, there was a flurry of party-switching going on in the weeks before the primary.

According to a Press Herald analysis, unenrolled voters were registering in strength, with three times as many dropping their “unenrolled” status to register to vote Republican as registering Democrat.

And, as many voters told us, many of these unenrolled voters registered simply to be counted in the primary and had every intention of unenrolling from their temporary party choice before the November vote.

No matter what party people chose to claim as their own — for a lifetime or for the day — the turnout numbers are a visible reminder that we “the people” really do have a say in our own government and getting to the polls really matters.

It’s hard to believe it was the candidates themselves that drew such attention, since so many voters couldn’t even name the candidates the week before the election, but perhaps so. More than likely, though, it was the tax reform issue that pushed voters to appear to repeal the law. Or, in Lewiston, the casino question may have been the driver.

The best part about Primary Day? The number of gubernatorial candidates was whittled from 14 to 5, down from a high of 30 candidates originally having taken out papers to run for office.

Five is a manageable number for voters to focus on party platforms and politics as we march toward November.

A mild jeer to well-intentioned Rumford Selectman Frank DiConzo, who has asked for — and received — an official recount of votes cast for the selectman’s race.

DiConzo lost his re-election bid by 58 votes. He says the count may be flawed because of how  clerks handled ballots when one of the town’s counting machines failed.

Rather than have voters line up to wait to feed ballots into a working machine, clerks allowed voters to drop ballots into an unlocked bin. By law, it should have been a locked box. But, in reality, if voters had to wait an extended time to cast ballots, would all of them had waited around?

Would it have been better to discourage voters and have fewer votes cast? Or accommodate the line of people who so responsibly took the time to vote?

The ballots may not have been locked up, but they were never left unattended, either, so there’s very little chance anything untoward happened to the paperwork. The clerks were aware of the problems with the machine, and hand-counted the ballots, working until after dawn on Wednesday. That’s a pretty impressive effort to get the count right the first time.

There were two open seats on the Board of Selectmen, and DiConzo placed fourth among the four candidates. We understand his desire to follow procedure, but we suggest that perhaps the accommodation made to gather ballots in a guarded bin was not such a deviation to cost the town the time, the effort and the funds it will take to recount Tuesday’s results.

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