While there were no surprises in local Rutherford County races, the big story this election may be the time it took to count the votes. It took a sequestered counting board, which was made up of 10 people, over 13-hours to count 1,975 absentee ballots. By state law, the county is not permitted to tabulate other vote totals until the absentee ballots are finished. The emailed ballots had to be printed, put onto cards and then looked over by the counting board before they could be counted...

That was County Election Administrator Nicole Lester, who at the time, didn't anticipate another problem. At 9:30, the process began tabulating precinct votes from electronic chips. WGNS' Bart Walker, who was at the election commission offices, reported around midnight...

The official election summary was released nearly two-hours later at 1:48am. Rutherford County was the last to report to the Tennessee Secretary of State's office, which oversees elections for the state.

(BELOW: Nicole Lester, Rutherford County Election Administrator)

(BELOW: Lester inputs the voting chips into the 1 card reader for entire county, reading each chip one at a time.)