Voter turnout defied predictions Tuesday, soaring above 35 percent in this so-called off-year election.

Mercer County Elections and Registration Director James Bennington predicted 20 percent of the county's 74,077 registered voters would go to the polls.

This morning, Bennington said his low-ball prediction was kind of a trick. "That was on purpose. I wanted to be wrong and wanted the voters to prove that," he said.

Hard-fought races for mayor in Sharon and Greenville and a county controller's race may have been responsible for the better-than-expected turnout, though pangs of patriotism may have inspired some voters.

Nearly twice as many people voted in Greenville this year than four years ago, when the same offices were up for grabs. Turnout in

the borough was 43 percent.

Almost 2,000 more people voted in Sharon this year than in 1997. Turnout in the city was 47 percent.

Tuesday was the first time the county's new electronic touch-screen voting machines were used in a general election.

Unfortunately, unfamiliarity bred contempt in at least one case.

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A Hermitage man who apparently did not like the newfangled voting machine allegedly poked one of the $2,400 touch screens to death, according to Bennington.

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The county isn't going to press charges against the "elderly guy," Bennington said. If possible, the machine will be repaired, he said.

Because of the novelty factor or perhaps skepticism, some voters actually spent more time voting on machines that are supposed to speed the process.

Lines of people waiting to vote were reported at several precincts.

There were a few problems, too.

In Sharpsville and Sugar Grove Township, those who made it to the polls early may have missed out on casting retention votes for judicial candidates. Bennington said when the last-minute additions were programmed into the machines, the screen that listed the retention votes was left off.

Bennington said he fixed the problem and voters later in the day saw all the screens. He said today he didn't know how many voters didn't get to vote for retention. "I imagine quite a few," he said.

Those ballots also helped to create a delay later, when results from the machines had to be entered by hand into the overall tally. By 10 p.m., all returns were accounted for except for results from precincts in Sharpsville, Sugar Grove Township and Sharon.

The new machines feature an "info pack" that contains results. The pack is plugged into a computer at the courthouse and the results added to the tally. That calculation depends on the right vote totals being counted for the right office. Since names were added to the ballot Tuesday, the results from Sharpsville and Sugar Grove Township weren't in the correct sequence.

The info pack was the problem in Sharon. Bennington said poll workers at 2-1, which votes at Shenango Valley Community Library, didn't include the info pack with material they sent to the courthouse after the polls closed. Bennington said he drove halfway to Sharon to pick up the info pack.