The Washoe County Registrar of Voters staff couldn't finish the tally about 1:15 a.m. today because of an unusually high number of cartridges from voting machines that contained no votes.

The 180,253 ballots cast were a new record for the county. The turnout of 77.88 percent slightly exceeded predictions but was less than the record of 84 percent in 1980.
When the final batch of cartridges was being processed, about 40 cartridges had no votes, said Kathy Carter, county spokeswoman. The system flagged them because it was such a high number.
The cartridges were among 1,300 cartridges used Tuesday and were being re-run to verify that they contained no votes. Each voting machine uses one cartridge.