An unexpected voter turnout caused a ballot shortage in some precincts throughout DeKalb County on Tuesday.

Seventy-six percent of the 52,754 registered voters in DeKalb County voted in the 2008 General Primary Election, according to the DeKalb County Web site.

“We have never had a turnout this big in the 30 years I’ve worked here,” said DeKalb County Clerk Sharon Holmes, before the election results came in. “It was an exciting day because we had such a big turnout.”

About 15 out of the 85 precincts within the county either ran out or came close to running out of ballots and had to call for additional ballots to be printed, Holmes said.

Democratic, Republican and nonpartisan ballots ran out within the different precincts and had to be reprinted.

The Democratic ballots had to be reprinted most, Holmes said.

Of the 40,505 ballots cast, the Democratic ballot cast 21,520, with Republicans following with 18,463 ballots.

“The fact that we ran out of more Democratic ballots, looks to me that [Democrats] had a bigger turnout county wide,” Holmes said.

Holmes apologized to anyone who had to wait or was inconvenienced by the “guessing error.”

“We hope we didn’t disenfranchise anyone from voting,” Holmes said.

Holmes also said that some election judges were so busy that some were unable to eat or take breaks.

“I really appreciated the hard work and the good job [the election judges] did today, because they were really put to the test in the biggest turnout we have ever had in the primary,” Holmes said. “I appreciated all the people that came out and voted today, even with the bad weather.”