WUKAN, China — For the brave and canny residents who famously rose up in December and ran their corrupt leaders out of town, the election held on Saturday in this ramshackle fishing village was billed as the big payoff, a democratic reward for demanding their rights.

And maybe it was. But even before the votes were counted, there were hints that their triumph might have been oversold.

More than 6,000 of the town’s 8,000 eligible voters trooped to a makeshift election center at the village school and chose a new village council to replace the old one, disbanded amid allegations of land fraud. They filled out pink ballots in rows of plywood booths that ensured their choices would remain secret, then dropped them in big steel boxes sealed with tamper-proof stickers. Officials tallied the votes in the schoolyard as residents looked on. Above the scene, banners proclaimed “Civilized election, fair competition” and “Obeying the law.”

It was the first truly democratic vote here in decades, if not ever, and something of a landmark of transparency in China’s opaque politics. By the time it ended, the very men who had led Wukan’s struggle against an entrenched village autocracy had been chosen as its new leaders.