Power briefly cut at Daugavpils polling station — vote count continued by candlelight
Electricity was briefly lost at polling station No. 160 in Daugavpils just before closing time during the Saeima elections, but the vote count was not disrupted. Power was soon restored.
At polling station No. 160, located at Daugavpils University, a power outage was recorded on Friday just minutes before the station's scheduled 8 p.m. closing time during the 15th Saeima elections. Security authorities were notified of the disruption, said Central Election Commission representative Iveta Rozenfelde.
Ruta Velika, chair of the Daugavpils election commission, later confirmed to the LETA news agency that power had been restored at the polling station. According to her, the outage occurred roughly five minutes before the official closing time.
Vote counting unaffected
Velika said the power loss did not disrupt either the voting process or the subsequent vote count, as staff had come prepared with charged phones and laptops, as well as candles and flashlights, to keep work going without interruption.
Rozenfelde added that had power not been restored within a reasonable time, the municipality would have had to decide on relocating the vote count to another safe location. Since electricity was restored relatively quickly, that step proved unnecessary, and proceedings at the station continued without a break.
