The new tabulation system used in New Brunswick's municipal elections on Monday worked as expected but didn't return results as quickly as election officials had hoped it would.

New Brunswick used new high-tech tabulation machines in the province's municipal elections that allowed voters to hand-mark their ballots but then scanned and counted the results as the ballot was inserted into the box.

The memory cards in the machines, along with the ballots, were taken to returning offices after the polls closed to be counted.

The memory cards were plugged into computers at the returning office and then results were verified and uploaded to the Elections New Brunswick website, said chief electoral officer Mike Quinn.

Election officials were hoping that the new technology would allow the results of the elections in New Brunswick's 104 communities and 18 school districts to be counted in about 90 minutes.

In the end, it took more than three hours, Quinn said. There were reasons for the delay, he added.

"There has been very heavy special balloting around the province," he said. "A lot of the results can't be closed off until all those special ballots are put through the machines after the polls closed."

The mobile polls also had to go to returning offices and the machines had to be processed.

Beat old system by hours

The whole process simply took longer than officials had anticipated, Quinn said.

It was still faster than the old system, in which ballots were counted by hand, he said.

"Under the old system, Elections New Brunswick has often not closed off its results until 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.… [This is] far ahead of anything we've ever had before."

Of the 396,489 eligible voters in the province, 167,173 cast ballots, for a voter turnout of 42.16 per cent.

In the 2004 municipal elections, about 46 per cent of eligible voters went to the polls.

Elections officials had hoped the new voting technology and other efforts to make voting more accessible would increase the voter turnout in the province.