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NATCHEZ — One polling place in Natchez lost power during the final two hours before the closing of Tuesday’s congressional primary election, said Adams County Election Commissioner Larry Gardner said.

The Carpenter precinct, located at Rosehill Baptist Church on Madison street, lost power at approximately 5 p.m. Tuesday where polls were still open in the primary election for the 2^nd Congressional District seat, Gardner said.

According to Entergy, 186 customers were affected by the power outage, which was caused by a broken utility pole.

However, the poll stayed open with voters making their selections in the dark. The four plug-in voting machines ran on backup battery power, Gardner said. Two of the machines ran out of battery before polls closed at 7 p.m., but voters could still use the remaining two at the precinct. All of the votes on each machine are saved on memory cards, so no votes would be lost because of the outage, Gardner said.

Even if all of the machines had stopped working there is still a backup plan, he added.

“We have paper ballots that we could use if all of the machines go out,” he said. “When there is a will, there is a way.”

Apart from the power loss, no other hiccups were reported during Tuesday’s primary election, Gardner said.

Stay tuned at natchezdemocrat.com to find out how Adams County voted in the congressional primary with the rest of the state.