Lights go out on election night in Colusa

It was kind of like a Kumbaya moment inside the Colusa County Courthouse on Tuesday night.

With flashlights in hand — the power out throughout the county — the elections staff recorded its night's tally with pen and paper, then sent the results to the California Secretary of State's Office by "old school fax" from the Sheriff's Department.

"We finished everything by flashlight," said Clerk-Recorder Kathleen Moran.

The one break the staff got was it had finished inputting the information into the computers before fuse blew out at at PG&E substation in the south county shortly before 10 p.m., said Brandi Ehlers, a spokeswoman for the utility company.

The outage, apparently caused by dirt and debris building up on the fuse, knocked out the power to the courthouse and 14,000 other customers in Colusa County and northern Yolo County.

Power was restored about 2 a.m., Ehlers said.

Moran said her office had temporary backup power through a battery system, but eventually that too failed.

"It did cause a little delay," Moran said.

The silver lining is that the outage did not happen earlier — such as at the close of the polls at 8 p.m.

"That would have been a bigger problem," Moran said.

Instead, Moran and her staff were back at it on Wednesday, counting the 93 provisionals and 263 mail-in ballots that were dropped off at various polling locations around the county.

In the end, it may have been more inconvenient for grocery stores and other businesses still open at night.