Even the fact that there were nine questions on the ballot--which typically confuses voters--did not seem to be a problem, officials said. Voters seemed prepared to vote on the question issues, they added.

"I was surprised how organized they were," said Cambridge police officer Clara Scott after she dropped off ballots at the Election Commission.

But Cangiamila said there were more complaints than usual this year about illegal campaigning near the polls, because Question 9 made people in Cambridge "very anxious" about the election.

Election officials and police officers, bringing boxes of ballots from different precincts, began arriving at the commission's office in Cambridge's Police Department after polls closed at 8 p.m.

But although the last box of ballots came in at 10:40 p.m., to the cheers of the staff, the results were tabulated slowly throughout the night and into the morning.

The reason, officials said, was that Cambridge's vote counting is not computerized, as in many other cities.

Wolf said that if they had computers, "by [10 p.m.] we would have known all the results."

For 12 years, Harvard's Office of Information Technology (OIT) had allowed Cambridge to use its computers to tabulate election results. But because of "space needs," the commission could not continue using their facilities this year, Bonislawski said.

"They were terrific," Wolf said. "If there's a way to have it done at Harvard again, we would like to see it happen."