At least a dozen Harris County voting centers left without power from Election Day storm

A powerful storm rolled through the Houston area Tuesday, leaving at least a dozen voting centers without power and one shut down because of damage on Election Day for the Democratic and Republican primary runoffs, according to the Harris County Clerk’s Office .

Despite the outages, no voting centers had closed as of about 2:30 p.m., according to the clerk’s office. Shortly after 4 p.m., however, the clerk’s office announced the voting center at the Houston Texans YMCA, at 5202 Griggs Road, was closed because of unspecified storm damage.

Information was not immediately available about which centers lost power, but the voting machines operate on battery so voters still can cast a ballot in a center without power as long as it is still open, according to the clerk’s office.

Several more centers initially lost power as the storm moved through the area, but have since seen it restored, according to the clerk’s office.

The clerk’s office advised voters to go to harrisvotes.org to find open polling centers near them, then call the Harris County Elections Department at 713-755-6965 to verify the location is still open. There were 313 vote centers open at the start of the day.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo reported the storm’s most damaging winds were in the northeast portion of the county.

More than 313,000 customers were without power as of 2:40 p.m. Tuesday, according to Centerpoint.

As of 12:30 p.m., more than 7,000 votes had been cast in person on Election Day, according to the clerk’s office. Polls close at 7 p.m.

The storm comes after early voting last week was disrupted by a violent May 16 storm that left more than 900,000 people without power in the area and closed six early vote centers due to a lack of power or damage to the building.