COEUR d'ALENE - It took seven hours to select a winner in Kootenai County.

If somebody showed up at 5 p.m. Tuesday night to check in for Idaho's first Republican presidential caucus, they would have to stick with the process until after midnight to find out the winner. The state's winner by then was long known, with southern Idaho finishing up much earlier and deciding Mitt Romney would get the state's 32 delegates.

There was lots of waiting in line Tuesday night and lots of waiting on ballot counts. There was more waiting as people, sometime from the audience grabbed the microphone and made a case for a specific candidate.

"We had people who walked out," Kootenai County GOP chair Tina Jacobson said Wednesday.

And people did walk out. There were 3,775 people who voted in the first round. But only 1,172 people voted in the final round.

Many people were determined to participate, however.

Phil Thompson, of Twin Lakes and a volunteer at Timberlake High School, said, "The people seemed determined to be heard. They were standing in line with crying toddlers, (and) others turned out right after work, their evening meal in hand."

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won Kootenai County Tuesday night, receiving 674 votes countywide in the final round, compared with 496 for Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Only the final two candidates receive votes in the final caucus round.

Idaho moved to the caucus on Super Tuesday so the state would have a say in the presidential candidate nominating process. Southern Idaho just turned out to have all the say.

Ron Lahr, president of the Kootenai County Reagan Republicans, said he only lasted two hours.

"Caucuses are long in nature," he said.

Seven hours was too long, though, he said.

"There were definitely issues, but I think that is normal anytime you do something new," Lahr said. "I wouldn't call it a disaster."

The registrations and party affiliation paperwork created a serious bottleneck, he said.

"Even though it took very long, it accomplished what it was supposed to," he said.

Much will be learned, and it should be better next time, he said.

Jacobson said the northern and southern regions of Idaho need to start caucusing at the same time, so southern Idaho, which is on Mountain time, doesn't get too much of jump.

In the time it took southern Idaho to decide on Romney, North Idaho had eliminated only one of the five candidates - Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana.

Jacobson said she has already talked with state party leaders about making sure everybody begins at the same time.

Speaking of Roemer, Jacobson said the party needs a mechanism that would allow it to get rid of candidates like him, "who is no longer a Republican candidate" by the time caucusing begins.

"It would have sped things up an awful lot if he hadn't been on the ballot," she said.

Because it took so long just to eliminate Roemer, many people left. There were 1,163 fewer voters who participated in the second round compared with the first, she said.

"Some of them just realized how long it was going to take and couldn't stay there that long," she said.

The party can also look at different ways of voting in each round.

The way it worked Tuesday night, the last-place candidate and candidates receiving less than 15 percent were eliminated from each round. Then everybody voted again in the following round for whatever candidates were left.

In Iowa, for example, a preliminary vote requires candidates to receive 15 percent or greater support to be considered viable. But only those who voted for a non-viable candidate are required to vote again, with the option to switch their support to one of the viable candidates.

The Iowa-style caucusing would lead to less vote counting and less time spent filing people past the ballot boxes.

Methods of voting in the Iowa caucus differ by party, with Republicans using a ballot system, but Democrats physically group themselves together at the caucus site, making participants' vote a public matter.

Additionally, Jacobson said too much time was spent on party affiliation paperwork, which was needed to make sure only Republicans were participating in the caucus.

"That's where the hang-up was," she said. "That put us about an hour behind."

She said next time more people will be on record as being affiliated with the party.

"There won't be anywhere near the number" of people needing to affiliate in four years, she said.

There also were many people who were registering to vote.

She said it would have helped to have one caucus location instead of 10.

Jacobson spent caucus night at Lakeland High School, which was one of the night's busier sites. The other nine sites called in their results to Lakeland, where it was determined which candidates would survive to the next round countywide.

She said the busier sites need more voting areas at each site. At Lakeland there were two sets of candidate boxes for voters to walk by and drop their ballot in.

"Three or four sets of boxes might make for faster voting, but would require more volunteers," she said.

The good news, though the process was slow, was there were no claims of voter fraud.

Kootenai County was the last county to report its caucus results.

That could be explained by the later start and the fact Kootenai County is the third largest voting county, she said.