Voters cast their ballots in a dark Brown Gym at Hopkinton Middle School on Tuesday morning. PHOTO/JOHN CARDILLO
Election Day got off to an interesting start, as power went out at Hopkinton Middle School just before the polls opened at 7 a.m. However, it did not cause a major problem.
According to Town Clerk Connor Degan, his crew was prepared for such a situation, and backup power to the election equipment went on immediately. His crew then brought in a generator to prevent the machines’ backup systems from draining. So, the only issue was a dim Brown Gym.
“[The voting machines] weren’t down,” Degan said. “Nothing went down besides the lights.”
Degan added that residents still should feel comfortable voting at any time. The polls are to remain open until 8 p.m.
“We have backups hard-wired into our systems,” he said. “We are all set in case of this contingency.”
Degan said he was informed by Eversource that the cause of the outage was a blown transformer on Ash Street. An email from Eversource to affected residents estimated power would be restored by 10 a.m.
UPDATE: According to an email from Eversource, power was restored at 8:39 a.m. The email indicated 717 customers were impacted, and the problem was caused by “damage to our electrical equipment.”
Voters wait for the polls to open at Hopkinton Middle School on Tuesday morning. PHOTO/JOHN CARDILLO
Crews set up a generator outside Hopkinton Middle School on Tuesday morning to help with the power outage. PHOTO/JOHN CARDILLO
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