Worse problems delayed the count in two Texas counties where paper ballots were read by older-style machines and in a New Jersey county where aging technology was also blamed.
In Arkansas' most populous county, meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans sparred over extending voting hours.
The closely watched contest for governor in Florida was decided without a hitch, a contrast from Florida's Sept. 10 experience, when faulty planning and inadequate training of poll workers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties bred chaos that delayed results for a week.
Election workers were better trained this time around.
"We finally have this monkey off our back that we cannot conduct a proper election," Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith said.
"What we can conclude is if the machines are introduced in the right way ... the process can work," said Dan Seligson of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan election-reform group.
Some touch-screen machines in Florida and Georgia were misprogrammed or not accurately calibrated. Others froze and had to be rebooted, and cards voters need to access machines malfunctioned. Problems were quickly corrected and, at worst, only lengthened lines.
Georgia had the largest deployment of new high-tech machines, with 22,000 touch-screens across the state. The most serious of the high-tech problems appeared in two Georgia counties where officials said they could result in contested elections and lawsuits.
In southwest Terrell County, ballots in at least three precincts for a time listed the wrong county commission races. In Bryan County near Savannah, a county commission race was omitted from a ballot.
"They are locking up, and we have to turn them off and turn them on," said Mary Cranford, election superintendent in Georgia's Coweta County. "The voting is taking a little longer."
All told, more than 200 counties nationwide -- in California, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Texas and elsewhere -- introduced the new technology, mostly touch-screen machines. Sixteen percent of the nation's counties, or 510, now have electronic voting. That's one in five registered voters.
Analysts expect 75 percent of counties to have such systems within six years. A new $3.9 billion federal law will help states replace equipment.
No troubles were reported in the nation's largest county to go all electronic: Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston.
Still, some analysts cautioned that the new systems' reliability can't be guaranteed.
Rebecca Mercuri, an expert on election technology at Bryn Mawr College, worries that the new machines lack paper backups, making it impossible to double check ballots.
She said the isolated problems described as minor could be signal deeper trouble.
"A lot of these products were rushed to market" and are thus apt to contain software bugs that could affect results, Mercuri said.
But no election is ever problem-free, said Doug Lewis of the Election Center, a nonpartisan training organization for election administrators. He termed it noteworthy that so many machines debuted without larger problems.
More serious trouble arose with older technologies.
In Tarrant County, Texas, which includes Fort Worth, officials said tallies might not be completed until Wednesday night because of a programming error with older-style machines. A lengthy ballot combined with high turnout during early voting was blamed for delays in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio.
In Pulaski County, Ark., which includes Little Rock, Democrats won a court order to extend polling hours after arguments about several polling stations running out of ballots. But Republicans appealed to the state Supreme Court, which ordered the polls closed in the heavily Democratic county.
In New Jersey's Atlantic County, no results at all had been reported as of early Wednesday.
County Clerk Michael Garvin blamed aging equipment after vote totals had to be hand-delivered to election officials, rather than transmitted electronically.
"This is an embarrassment," Garvin told The Press of Atlantic City. "I'm very frustrated. ... These machines are so old that we can't even get parts for them anymore."
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