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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- City officials were more than busy during the April 5 Colorado Springs municipal election, they were inundated. More than 27,000 ballots were turned in on the final day.

Election officials can tabulate an average of 6,000 ballots a day, and with 10,000 still to go Tuesday night, officials said they had gone as far as they could and decided to finish them Wednesday.

"They quite frankly were unprepared for that last minute surge," Sue Skiffington-Blumberg with the city of Colorado Springs said. "So at some point they had to say, 'it's time to give the human resources a break and a rest.'"

The city of Colorado Springs had one of the highest voter turnouts in history with 59 percent of voters returning their mail-in ballots.

Tallying mail-in ballots is a labor-intensive process that's time consuming for voters and city officials.  But the ballot break isn't sitting well with council-elects, who are asking for a change in the ballot process.

"If this is going to be protocol, as far as 10 o'clock deadline, and if we're working for it to be complete, maybe we should adjust that day," Brandy Williams, council-elect, said.

Besides the uncounted ballots, there was another bit of confusion with the final election results.

"[Our website] said the number of precincts reporting is 307, 307 precincts had checked in at 100 percent. But the votes had not yet been counted," Skiffington-Blumberg said.

City officials are anticipating an equally high voter turnout for the strong mayor run-off election.