“We apologise for any inconvenience to people,” he said.

“Basically we had a big surge of people wanting to know the results at about 6.15pm, and the system crashed, and then we had it back up a short while later.

“It was bigger traffic than we’ve had in previous years, we had a very high return and that flows through to more people accessing that system, and it was enough to knock it over for that time.”

He said that while it was not ideal that the site went down, the commission was happy about the fact that so many more people than expected were seeking immediate election results.

“We should have had a system that didn't fall over and we apologise for any inconvenience to people, but we are pleased to see that people are engaging with local government elections in such high numbers,” he said.

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Live coverage from the local government election 2018

The TEC election results were offline from about 6.15pm to about 7.50pm.

Likely Meander Valley mayor Wayne Johnston said the whole system was a "balls up," while likely Meander Valley deputy mayor Michael Kelly said he was unimpressed with the counting process. 

"We've all put a lot of work into the campaign and like to sit back and watch it unfold, so it was all a bit disappinting," he said. 

Meanwhile, Tasmanians took to Facebook to air their frustrations with the electoral commission as they waited for the website to come back up. 

“Doesn’t instill confidence for electronic voting,” said Soo Doherty, while Hannah Rubenach-Quinn suggested emailing candidates the results as they come in. Mike Larkin perhaps summed up the best what many are feeling, with a series of crying with laughter emojis.