A small army of volunteer poll workers proved to be enough of a match for the strong turnout and hordes of new voters wanting to register at the polls in Keene Tuesday.

City Clerk Patricia A. Little said even during the morning rush — which turned out to be the heaviest traffic of the day — lines for registered voters were moving through with waits of no more than 15 or 20 minutes.

And that, she said, was largely due to the increased number of volunteers — nearly double that of an average year — who directed traffic and kept voting from turning into gridlock.

Little said she was somewhat surprised there wasn’t a last-minute stampede as polls closed, but attributed that to the number of people who expected long lines and cast their ballots early.

The story was a little different, though, for voters registering at the polls — especially in Keene’s college-student-heavy Ward 1, according to Little.

“Because of the number of students who registered Tuesday, we had a line going out the door almost all day,” Little said.

“It didn’t start early in the morning, but after about 10 a.m. we had a steady stream all day.”

Of the 75 volunteers posted at the city’s five wards, 30 of them were charged with registering new voters, Little said.

Forty-four percent of the city’s 2,808 newly registered voters were in Ward 1, which saw 1,220 new voters, according to Little.

City officials had visited Keene State College for the last six Mondays, registering nearly 400 students in advance of Tuesday’s election.

Little said the location of the polling places was also a key component in making Tuesday’s elections a smooth process.

After the 2004 presidential election, Little said, school officials asked city officials to find alternate polling places.

“At that point, school was in session and it overwhelmed the facility to have students there and people coming in all day,” Little said. “There was concern on the part of the school administration about all the folks, even some that weren’t local, coming in from the campaigns and wandering around in the halls.”

City officials found alternate polling places for all the wards except Ward 1, but following the primary elections in September, asked school officials to reconsider their decision not to allow polling at the schools.

“We could not have facilitated Ward 5 voters in the Trinity Lutheran Church, for example,” Little said. “It had to be in larger facilities because you need enough floor space to segregate the different processes.”

School officials worked with the city, closing school for the day to allow for the elections, Little said.

“It won’t be a big issue with local elections,” Little said. “It’s just that, with this election, it’s so much bigger.”

And while moving the polling places in some wards meant sending letters to voters in those areas, Little said it helped city workers purge the checklist of voters who had moved out of the ward where they were registered.

“It would show that, city-wide, turnout was 73 percent,” Little said. “But in Ward 3 and 4 it was closer to 85 percent, which gives a more accurate picture of the truly active voters in the ward.”

Typically, the voter checklist is purged every 10 years, Little said, meaning that any voters who have moved out of their ward since 2000 remain on the list until they register at their new address.

This affects Ward 1 in particular, which had a 64 percent turnout, since it is made up of a large population of college students who leave after four or five years.

Ward 2 had a 67 percent turnout and Ward 5 hovered around 70 percent, according to Little.

Little said she was pleased with how smoothly the day went.

“It was really a coordinated effort and between the volunteers’ hard work and an audit team that came in at the end of the day to help with double checking numbers, it saved election workers about two hours at the end of the day,” she said.

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