When turnout at the Democratic caucuses on Tuesday far surpassed even the most generous predictions, party leaders faced a choice: relax the rules to let everyone vote, or stick to procedure and send voters away in frustration.

Most chose to let people vote — turning to blank slips of paper when the ballots ran out and conducting less-than-thorough checks of voter and party registration.

While many voters took the chaos in stride, others asked why the party was unprepared for the turnout and how the ballot count could be accurate.

Advertiser readers posted online comments saying that some at the caucuses were allowed to cast ballots without showing identification or declaring party affiliation and a lack of security may have allowed people to stuff the ballot boxes.

Party members said they did the best they could under the circumstances, and supporters of both U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York said any irregularities probably wouldn't change the results, which favored Obama 3 to 1.

District 20 Chairwoman Rachel Orange said her district checked the number of ballots against the attendance sheet on Tuesday to make sure there wasn't ballot stuffing going on.

"There were small discrepancies, but nothing I was concerned with," she said, adding that the party will be verifying the totals over the next couple of weeks.

Florence Kong Kee, the party's political director, said, "We definitely had problems, between traffic, between parking, the long lines. But I've been confident the whole time that people would be patient. They understood these were volunteers" running the caucuses.

"I credit our volunteers and the participants who came last night," Kong Kee said.

'WE'RE IN SHOCK'

The party had estimated before Tuesday that it had about 20,000 members, but more than 37,400 people came for the caucuses.

"We're in shock," Kong Kee said. "Who would have thought that so many people would come."

Orange, the District 20 chair, said it would have been hard to anticipate a 37,000-plus turnout in a state that has never seen more than 5,000 Democrats come out to caucus.

Orange pointed out that four years ago, 128 people participated in the caucus at Palolo Elementary School. On Tuesday, that number swelled to 1,028.

"No reasonable person would predict the increase would be on that order of magnitude," Orange said. "I'm actually amazed that it worked as well as it did."

Rep. Kirk Caldwell, who caucused at Manoa Elementary School, called the scene controlled chaos that was unavoidable given the phenomenal turnout.

Caldwell, a Clinton supporter, said the results weren't close enough to call for a challenge despite the irregularities. "My view is, it's time to move on," he said, noting that the tide could shift before delegates pick a presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in August.

"In the end, I think Democrats are going to rally around whoever gets the nomination," he said.

At this point, Caldwell said, he would discourage anyone from challenging the results since it seemed pretty clear that the vast majority of ballots were cast for Obama.

Richard Port, a Democratic national committeeman and one of Hawai'i's superdelegates, ran one of the precincts voting at Jefferson Elementary School on Tuesday.

"I'm sure it's true all over the state that turnout was so incredible that people ran out of ballots and ran out of party cards or registration forms, but people did the best they could," he said.

In his own precinct, people weren't given a ballot until they had signed the attendance sheet, but he doubted that people would have taken advantage of a less organized system.

"I don't think anyone there was interested in fraud," he said. "I would have been surprised if there were 10 votes miscounted (across the state). People seemed to just want to cast their vote and let it go with that."

SUPERDELEGATES

The criticism that Port takes issue with is that the superdelegates should vote based on the caucus results. "My support for Hillary Clinton is probably going to cost me my re-election, but I feel it's a matter of principle. She's definitely the most experienced person."

He thinks it would be a mistake if superdelegates were bound to vote based on caucuses because their job is to make sure that whoever is nominated has the best chance of winning. "We've had two experiences where the front-runner has faltered," he said.

If superdelegates had been in play in 1980, for instance, they probably would have nominated U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy rather than President Jimmy Carter to run against Ronald Reagan, who ultimately won the election, Port said.

Hawai'i isn't the only place where superdelegates might go against primary or caucus result. Massachusetts voters picked Clinton, but Sens. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy have endorsed Obama.

"When they vote for Hillary Clinton, who won their primary, then I will vote for Obama," Port said.