RUMFORD — A high voter turnout, a larger than usual number of ballots and not enough voting machines were the reasons for not having final tallies by late Tuesday, Town Clerk Beth Bellegarde said.

By 6:43 p.m., 1,050 people had cast their seven local ballots into two new ballot machines and the lone state ballot into another new ballot machine, town moderator Rob Cameron said as he helped voters.

By 6:45 p.m., the line of people waiting for ballot booths extended out the door and along the sidewalk next to the American Legion hall. Inside, two long lines extended beyond the voting booths. Wait times for many were from 15 to 45 minutes or more.

Rumford was voting on a $7.75 million municipal budget, which is $857,250 more than 2013-14’s $6.90 million. It doesn’t include the school or county assessments.

Rumford had 300 voters in the first hour and about 340 absentee ballots, Bellegarde said. And now that she knows how long it takes for voters to cast multiple ballots in the new machines, she said she would look to get more machines.

With the old machines, fewer ballots were cast in each election, but the ballots were longer than ballots cast on Tuesday, she said.

Bellegarde said they would still be entering absentee ballots into the machines by 10 p.m. She didn’t expect to have results until midnight at the earliest.

In Dixfield by 6:18 p.m., 300 people had cast ballots out of 1,700 registered voters, Town Clerk Vickie Carrier said. They also had 13 absentee ballots.

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