Power outage hits downtown Fayetteville, pauses early voting

FAYETTEVILLE — Dozens of early voters found the Washington County courthouse doors locked Wednesday afternoon after a power outage knocked out voting computers and the metal detector for about an hour and a half.

Scott McCloud, a company spokesman, said the outage started at 1:14 p.m. A piece of faulty equipment had been isolated before 2 p.m. Power was restored for most customers, including the courthouse, by 3 p.m., McCloud said.

McCloud said 725 customers were hit by the outage.

About 100 customers in an area between Center and Spring Streets and North Block Avenue and North Church Church Street will take longer to get power back, because underground equipment has to be repaired, McCloud said.

He said that could take about two hours.

The outage appeared to affect an area about 4 to 5 blocks wide, at the most, from Church Avenue to College Street.

During the outage, several voters queued up outside the front doors while several dozen walked back to their cars. Volunteers from the University of Arkansas Young Democrats handed out a form from the county clerk’s office showing the five other early voting locations and their hours. The volunteers explained the problem without mentioning their party affiliation or any specific candidate or issue.

The outage cut short the voting of a handful of people who at the time were using touch-screen ballots in the courthouse’s Quorum Courtroom. Their electronic votes weren’t counted.

“We kind of got shepherded upstairs to fill out paper ballots,” in the county clerk’s office, said Emily Carson, president of the Young Democrats. “I’m pretty confident my ballot’s going where it needs to go.”

No ballots were lost and no voters will be counted twice, said Jennifer Price, county election coordinator.

About 400 people had cast their votes in the courthouse between 8 a.m. and the power loss, Clerk Becky Lewallen said. At that rate, about 100 voters would have arrived in the time span of the outage.

Early votes can be cast in Fayetteville at the county courthouse, Boys & Girls Club and Medical Arts Pharmacy, as well as at Arvest Ballpark and the Rodeo Community Center in Springdale and in Prairie Grove’s City Hall. Any voter in the county can cast an early ballot at any of the locations. All but the ballpark are open until 6 p.m.

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