Some communities in Maine are taking longer to report results for a variety of reasons

WINDHAM (WGME) – Some communities in Maine have taken a little longer to get election results than voters might have expected, but there's no single reason for that.

For some Windham residents, voting took more than two hours on Tuesday.

CBS13 asked the city clerk if she had ever seen this before in a presidential election.

“I did,” said Windham City Clerk Linda Morrell. “Maybe it was a little worse yesterday, but yeah, we had lines like that, especially, I think, in 2016.”

There was a lot for people to deal with.

“And if you have questions about the referendum, you have to read them, and that takes longer,” Morrell said.

There has only been one polling place in Windham for about 20 years. CBS13 asked the city clerk if they'll need another one in the future.

“Well, it's a possibility, something we could probably discuss if we could just find a venue for it,” Morrell said.

In Sanford, city leaders recently gathered at one location to vote despite concerns from voters.

“They imagined they would have to wait outside for hours before they could vote,” said Sanford City Clerk Susan Cote.

Cote says that didn't happen and that it took voters there less than half an hour from start to finish.

Given the large turnout, Windham officials brought out secure boxes in the afternoon to make it easier for people to move.

“So if people didn’t want to wait in line themselves, they could just drop them off,” Morrell said.

But that meant some ballots couldn't go through the machines until at least 8 p.m

“It delayed us a lot,” Morrell said.

In Scarborough, the city manager said a technical issue, a problem with a memory stick, resulted in officials having to rescan the ballots, a process that dragged on into Wednesday morning.

“That's not entirely unusual. It is unfortunate that Scarborough is such a large community that the re-review has taken quite a long time,” said Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

Overall, Bellows says what's happening is normal.

“We saw the results coming in at the same pace as they have in every election cycle,” Bellows said.

Sanford was still going over his results Wednesday morning.

“Now we go back through, double check and make sure all the numbers are correct,” Cote said. “We are doing our best to provide the secretary with the official results.”

Municipalities have two business days to complete this.

“The most important thing for us is that the results are accurate so that when the winners are announced, we can be confident that that announcement reflects what happened on election night,” Bellows said.