GREENFIELD — An unexpected problem with Precinct 8’s ballot machine as well as write-in candidates led to poll workers counting many ballots by hand late Tuesday night. Nonetheless, Roxann Wedegartner was declared the new mayor of Greenfield.

Wedegartner won with 2,068 votes, besting Sheila Gilmour, with 1,882 votes, and Brickett Allis, with 1,539 votes.

She will succeed William Martin, who has been mayor for 10 years.

After unofficial election results were posted, Wedegarter celebrated with family, friends and fellow elected officials at Smitty’s Pub. She said she was excited and relieved to hear she had won.

“We were hopeful and optimistic throughout the night and, it took a long while, but it was done right,” she said.

She added that winning the election was no easy task.

“Brickett and Sheila gave me a run for my money,” Wedegartner said. “They both ran good campaigns and I hope we can work together in the future.”

Wedegartner arrived at Hope & Olive for her campaign party soon after 8 p.m., when polls were scheduled to close. The restaurant had standing-room only.

Her campaign, which she had started in earnest a year ago this month, had been exhausting, she said; it had been especially intense since the beginning of the summer.

“That was when we realized, ‘We’re in a real campaign,’” Wedegartner said.

The core campaign team was about 12 people, several of them with specialized roles, she said: a strategist, a graphic artist; her daughter was the campaign’s chief organizer.

“You want to get something done, you ask a busy woman to do it,” Wedegartner said, grinning.

Among Wedegartner’s supporters who had turned up for her campaign party was outgoing Mayor William Martin, who had not publicly endorsed a candidate.

“She is my choice for mayor,” Martin said.

Wedegartner’s experience in Greenfield’s government and her familiarity with the town set her apart from the other two candidates, Martin said. Being mayor involves a lot of complex issues, he said; “Roxann is going to be able to grasp those immediately.”

Wedegartner served on the Planning Board for 16 years from 2000 to 2016, and chaired for 14 years. She also served on the School Committee for six years from 1992 to 1998, chairing for three years. The Texas native moved to Franklin County in 1974, and Greenfield in 1980, working as a Greenfield Recorder reporter from 1974 to 1978.

The next mayor will inherit the city’s ongoing issues, Martin said: pressure to increase financial efficiency of the city government, the continuing transition to renewable energy, the anaerobic digester, to name a few.

“It’s not like I’m leaving her a clean slate,” Martin said. “It’s not like one term ends in January and another begins.”

But, he added, he is pleased with the work he has done in his 10 years in the office.

“I’m leaving this office in an improved position,” he said. “I feel very honored to have served in this time.”

Election day complications

Earlier in the day on Tuesday, the Recorder reported the ballot machine for Precinct 8 was not functioning. As a result, the ballots for all the races in this precinct were placed in an auxiliary bin to be hand-counted at the end of the night.

“The computer is not reading the information for the programming, is the best I can put it,” City Clerk Kathy Scott said. A technician was contacted to fix the machine, Scott said, but they had to stop for another incident in Worcester before coming to Greenfield.

Results for Precinct 8 were posted late as a result. Scott said the entire precinct was being hand-counted because of the machine malfunction, which was a first for her.

“The important thing was that we get the right information,” Scott said.

In addition, poll workers gathered the ballots with write-ins — which affected the mayoral, City Council and School Committee races — and hand-counted them. After each precinct’s write-in sheet was completed, Scott and Assistant City Clerk Geneva Bickford added the results manually, which became the draft results of the election.

Greenfield Police Chief Robert Haigh said the day went smoothly for his department.

“It went well, for the most part,” Haigh said. “It went the best it could, for as big an election as it was. There was a couple of little things — parking. But everyone cooperated.”

Haigh said he was at the polls from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. in addition to his deputy chief, a lieutenant and two officers throughout the day.

Sheila Gilmour

Shortly after polls closed Tuesday, Gilmour reflected on her campaign while surrounded by supporters at The People’s Pint on Federal Street. Results had not yet been determined.

“I would not change anything,” Gilmour said. “I had so many volunteers going out, knocking on doors. Even if it doesn’t work out in my favor, I will feel good. I know I gave 110 percent.”

According to Gilmour, her campaign’s positivity was what resonated with voters.

“I left this campaign feeling tired, but supported and loved,” she said.

Regardless of the result, Gilmour said her first order of business would be “sleeping in.” If she had won, Gilmour said she planned to take Tuesdays and Thursdays off — the rest of her vacation time — from her job to be in Greenfield frequently before taking office. Gilmour currently works at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she serves on her union’s Executive Board.

Throughout her campaign, Gilmour emphasized the need for transparency, especially during the budget process, and promised to run an accountable City Hall if elected, and upgrade city infrastructure as well as vehicles and equipment.

Gilmour also touted her experience on City Council, as the Senate District Coordinator for the Massachusetts Teachers Association and as a U.S. Air Force veteran, having served for eight years as a Russian linguist.

Certainly, Gilmour said, she will remember this election forever, crediting the race for pushing her to analyze and think critically about each issue.

“I have learned so much,” she said. “I have met people I never would have met, become friends with people, and learned a lot about myself — not because my views have changed, but the way I look at each issue is far more nuanced.”

Brickett Allis

As election officials hand-counted votes from Precinct 8, Brickett Allis and supporters went to Hangar Pub & Grill at 30 Federal St. to await word of the results. He acknowledged it was a long shot but said “stranger things have happened.”

“We worked so hard and we did everything we think we should have,” he said at roughly 9:25 p.m. “We’re not going away feeling like we didn’t do everything we could have.

“It appears the write-in effort didn’t produce a win,” he added. “That’s what it appears to be right now.”

Allis mounted a write-in campaign after coming in third in the September preliminary election and failing to earn a spot on the general election ballot. He said supporters urged him to be a write-in candidate.

“It never felt like a write-in. We just continued on with our campaign the way that we had planned it from the beginning,” he said. “We just continued on with the message. We just continued on with how we wanted to draw people to us.”

His entourage of supporters keeping him company at the Hangar included Maria Burge, City Council candidate Michael Terounzo and City Councilors Verne Sund and Isaac Mass.

“I have absolutely zero regrets,” Allis said. “My team was outstanding.”

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