Turns out, a massive mayoral write-in campaign in Utah's most populous county has election officials fearing they won't have final unofficial results the night of Nov. 2.

Not for that troublesome Salt Lake County mayor's race. Not for the Legislature. Not for attorney general. Not for Senate, governor, even president.

Forget hanging chads. Try hanging results.

Salt Lake County accounts for about 40 percent of Utah's population and close to a majority of the state's active voters. More than 300,000 Salt Lake County residents are expected to cast ballots. And if tens of thousands of those write in - or slap on stickers for - county mayoral candidate Ellis Ivory, that could force election workers to count tens of thousands of ballots by hand and delay results for days.

The problem: The punch-card ballots cannot be separated from the secrecy envelope (where voters list write-ins) once a write-in appears on that envelope. When a write-in name appears, election workers must punch a designated hole for the write-in candidate before feeding the ballot into a counting machine. Election workers cannot simply set aside all the write-in ballots and proceed with counting the rest, because ballots from one polling location (and there are hundreds) cannot be mixed with ballots from another.

Salt Lake County election officials are making plans to ensure a quick but accurate count. That could mean teams of volunteers working through the night or even taking shifts. But, at this point, even the best-case scenario shows results may not be known until the early morning after Election Day.

"It could be worse than that, actually," warned County Clerk Sherrie Swensen, who huddled with officials Thursday to discuss the predicament. "It's just going to slow it down."

Swensen stresses that she is an advocate of the right to write in candidates (though votes count only for registered write-ins).

She just wants voters to be patient waiting for the results.

Ivory spokesman Jim Bennett said the campaign understands the write-in process could slow the vote-counting.

"We want to know as much as anybody," Bennett said. "But the reality is: This is a more cumbersome process."

That's fine with the state's election czar.

"If it takes them a day or longer, I am not going to be screaming," said state Elections Director Amy Naccarato. "The law says you do it until you're done. You don't want the whole election to be wrong because you did it too fast. The last thing we want is for results to be wrong."

Technically, the results provided on election night are unofficial. They don't become official until elected leaders canvass the votes some two weeks later.

But politicians, the public and the media hunger for quick results.

"It's going to drive [the news media] crazy," Naccarato said.

Without returns, reporters will be relying more on exit polls to pick potential winners.

Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a Washington-based group devoted to gathering and sharing information on voting changes, said a lot of jurisdictions will go slower this year when counting ballots after Florida's fiasco four years ago.

"One thing we're seeing is a lot more election officials who will have a lot less emphasis on getting it done quickly," Chapin said. "You'd rather be right than quick."

No matter how long it takes to count the ballots, Utahns probably won't have to wonder about one major race.

"The president will do very well in Utah," predicted Ron Fox, vice chairman of Utah's Bush-Cheney campaign. "We're really the No. 1 state" supporting Bush.

So the networks probably can go ahead and punch that red button for Utah.

tburr@sltrib.com