Even the heavier-than-usual voter turnout turned out to be heavier than expected.

At polling places all across Wyoming, election officials marveled at the number of voters and new registrants who showed up Tuesday. In some cases, turnout was so high that election officials had to scramble to ensure an adequate supply of ballots.

Natrona County voter registration, at 29,440, was about 1,600 voters higher than four years ago. Even as polls closed at 7 p.m., some polling places reported they still had lines. Three precincts had to use a total of 38 photocopied ballots, County Clerk Mary Ann Collins said. The photocopied ballots from the Roosevelt High School, Seventh-Day Adventist and Bressler Ranch precincts had to be counted by hand.

State election officials weren't surprised -- they expected a larger-than-usual turnout this year.

"We've already had such a large turnout statewide with absentee voting," said State Election Director Peggy Nighswonger.

She said between 20 and 25 percent of total registered voters had already cast absentee ballots -- a percentage much larger than in previous years.

For Casper voters, waiting in lines to vote was a new experience.

At Centennial Junior High School, voters lined up before the polls opened at 7 a.m.

"We couldn't see the end of the line from in here, it wrapped around the outside of the building," said poll worker Joanne Mauser. "They were glad to get in. It was kind of chilly outside."

An hour after the polls opened, 160 ballots had been cast. By noon, the machine had read 570 ballots -- far outweighing the noontime numbers of previous years, according to Election Judge Sheila Goldsmith.

In the 2000 election, there were 394 ballots at noon, she said. Goldsmith keeps track of hourly numbers on a yellow legal notepad, something she's done for every election.

By 5:30 p.m., the precinct had already received 526 votes -- only 400 of whom were registered before Tuesday -- and 120 absentee ballots were still to be counted.

The lines had a lot to do with new voters, too, election officials said. By 5:30 p.m., 140 newly registered voters had cast their ballots.

Nationally, intense voter registration drives and keen interest in the presidential contest put Tuesday's election on track to draw the heaviest turnout in years. Officials were watching whether it would approach the 1960 benchmark, when about two-thirds of eligible voters came out to back John Kennedy or Richard Nixon.

An estimated 117.5 million to 121 million people were expected to cast votes Tuesday, which, if forecasts were correct, would be 58 percent to 60 percent of eligible voters.

Slightly more than 51 percent of voters, about 105.4 million, cast ballots in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore.

Turnout was so unexpectedly high in Laramie County that many precincts feared they would run out of ballots, according to County Clerk Debra Lathrop, who said at 6:25 p.m. that her office was printing more.

"It would be easier to name the places that have not run out of ballots than to name the ones that have," she said in an interview on KGWN-TV, local channel 5.

Although several precincts put out the call for extra ballots, few actually needed them, Lathrop later said.

Even before the polls had opened, voter registration was up in the state. As of Oct. 22, there were 232,396 registered voters in Wyoming, and increase of more than 12,000 over the 2000 election.

In western Wyoming the energy boom, combined with high interest in the presidential race, resulted in a heavy voter turnout Tuesday, county clerks in the region said.

In Lincoln County, an influx of new residents working in the nearby Jonah natural gas fields had election workers scrambling to provide enough ballots for some of the county's smaller communities such as LaBarge.

"LaBarge is our hot precinct, and we had to run some more ballots up there ... They have all these oil field workers that moved in, and they're all coming in to register," Lincoln County Clerk Jeanne Wagner said.

LaBarge, which saw only 157 voters in the primary, had 57 new registrants by early afternoon, she said.

Sublette County also got a boost in new voters. County Clerk Mary Lankford said, "We registered an awful lot of voters for this election, and my judges have been calling for more registration cards ... It's been a big day for us."

Sweetwater and Uinta county clerks also reported heavy turnouts and many new voters registering at the polls.

In one precinct in Carbon County, some voters were afforded an extra level of privacy. In Precinct 13-01, voting is conducted in Riverside Town Hall. But because the tiny town hall has only one voting booth, some voters cast their ballots while sitting on the toilet in the town hall's bathroom.

In Laramie temperatures hovered about 6 degrees above zero, as the first voters arrived at polling places at 7 a.m. By 7:30, 66 had voted at Spring Creek Elementary School. By lunchtime, a line of about 20 had formed at the county library. And by 2:30 p.m., nearly 700 had voted at the junior high school. Election workers said the turnout was heavier than usual.

At the Casper Senior Center, 487 people had voted by 5:15 p.m. Prior to Tuesday, only about 400 people had registered in the precinct.

At Evansville Elementary, people lined up to vote 45 minutes before the polls opened, according to Election Judge Tammy Baker. Throughout the day, lines grew up to as many as 20 people waiting to vote in the small classroom.

"We had to set up two extra bases," said Sally Bloom, the site's election coordinator. "I was thinking I'd just let people use my back to write on if we had to," she laughed.

Star-Tribune reporter Andrea Falkenhagen can be reached at andrea.falkenhagen@casperstartribune.net or (307) 266-0633. Star-Tribune correspondent Candy Moulton contributed to this report.