Regis Young's long day's journey into night Tuesday stretched deep into the wee hours of this morning.

This monument of elections was over - finally.

For a brief moment after the record-setting 85,913th ballot in Butler County was counted, the seasoned director of the county Bureau of Elections could finally relax.

"I'm so happy it went this way," Young said. "I'm even happier that it's over."

He wasn't talking about the results of any of the races. What went well is that nothing went wrong in the election process. Well, almost nothing.

For weeks, Young and his staff were up to their eyeballs in a rising tide of new voter registrations and a seemingly never-ending demand for absentee ballots.

There was mounting concern that Pennsylvania - a swing state in this year's white-hot presidential race - could become the 2004 version of Florida 2000, when hanging chads became an infamous catch phrase.

Young was left to watch as lawyers and poll watchers pounced upon the county's polling places. There was a fear of long lines filled with impatient and polarized voters.

Then there was the incessant ringing of telephones during the final days of the campaign; calls made from those wanting to know if they were registered to vote.

Who knew what would bode Tuesday?

"I was expecting the worst and it came out the best," Young said.

Hardly a glitch was reported during Tuesday's record-setting vote casting.

However, Young said he was not particularly pleased with the number of poll watchers brought in by the Republican and Democratic parties.

"Butler County voters are not accustomed to having poll watchers around," he said. "It was intimidating to them."

But in the end, even Democratic and Republican lawyers called in to monitor the polls had a difficult time finding fault in the voting.

"There were questions that came up but the issues were nothing major," said James Kraus of Butler, a Pittsburgh attorney hired by the Kerry-Edwards Democratic campaign to stand watch over voting in the county.

"We were confident and satisfied that things went well at the polls."

Republican lawyers and poll watchers for the Bush-Cheney campaign were just as content.

"There were no problems," said Ron Elliott of Zelienople, an attorney with the Butler law firm of Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham, who assisted in monitoring the polls on behalf of President Bush's campaign.

Young also was pleased with an unusually high turnout of voters, many of whom cast ballots for the first time.

He noted more ballots were cast in this election than in any prior one in the county. The 85,913 ballots Tuesday far exceeded the previous record of 72,189 in 2000.

Voter turnout Tuesday was 76 percent, compared to 68.5 percent four years ago. Turnout statewide Tuesday was 58 percent.

Butler County's turnout was better than the 71 percent of voters who cast ballots in the 1996 presidential election, but less than the record 87 percent turnout in 1992.

Young had predicted a high turnout given the interest in the presidential race, coupled with the 112,974 eligible voters in the county - the highest number of registered voters in the county.

The voter response elated Republican and Democratic officials. The consensus was the Bush-Kerry race was almost entirely responsible for the impressive turnout.

"Turnout was great," said Jim Powers, chairman of the county Republican Committee. "Obviously the presidential election got emotions high on both sides and got voters to the polls."

The ballot barrage was largely due to first-time voters, said Mary Alice McCosby, vice chairman of the county's Democratic Committee.

"And many of those first-timers were young folks in both parties," she said. "It was great to see so many new voters turnout."

Still, McCosby was not optimistic that Tuesday would set a new trend in elections in the county.

Young was downright pessimistic: "What really bothers me is that we won't see 50 percent of these voters until another four years, when the next presidential election comes around."

Meanwhile, county Republicans and Democrats found different reasons to gloat over the outcome of the presidential race.

Powers said he was ecstatic with President Bush's apparent re-election.

McCosby said she was pleased Democratic candidate John Kerry carried Pennsylvania, a state that Bush had visited more than 40 times.

With 99 percent of precincts counted, Kerry received 51 percent of the vote compared to Bush's 49 percent.

In Republican-dominated Butler County, Bush defeated Kerry, 54,654 votes to 29,913.

Bush in 2000 carried Butler County by nearly 19,000 votes, winning 62 percent of the vote compared to Democrat Al Gore's 35 percent.