Flashlights and cell phones used in darkened Trumbull precincts

WARREN

One Warren city and one Warren Township polling location were without power throughout most of Tuesday afternoon, but flashlights and cellphones were used to provide voters with enough light to fill in paper ballots.

An afternoon windstorm knocked out power to polling locations in eight communities in western Trumbull County, but six generators were provided to six of the locations.

Trumbull elections officials were impressed with images showing poll workers at New Jerusalem Church on Palmyra Road providing flash lights to allow people to vote.

Poll workers were holding flash lights above tables where voters were filling out paper ballots that were delivered to the affected polling locations.

A poll worker told The Vindicator everyone who wanted to vote at the New Jerusalem location was able to vote, despite the outage, which began around 3:30 at that location.

Mark Alberini, elections board chairman, said as many as 13 polling sites were without power at one point, but some got their power back quickly, others got generators, and two others “were literally voting in the dark.”

Locations that lost power used paper ballots to replace electronic voting machines, so there were going to be extra paper ballots to count at the end of the counting process, Alberini said. There was concern this could slow the final vote results.

As of 6 p.m., the outages were affecting Bloomfield, Mesopotamia, Southington, Farmington, Warren and Bristol Townships, plus Warren, Lordstown and Newton Falls.

High winds, with gusts up to 50 mph, thrashed northern and central Trumbull County. The county 911 Center reported many areas with multiple trees and tree branches damaging power lines.

However, between 7 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, First Energy reported that its crews had reduced the number of outages in Trumbull, the hardest hit in the tri-county area, from 4,454 to 71. In Mahoning County, the outages were reduced from 255 to 105, and from 30 to 24 in Columbiana County.