Are California Power Shutoffs Going to Impact Election?

Roughly 15,000 Californians could be without power beginning Tuesday evening as Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) begins shutting off power to combat wildfire threats. The upcoming power outages are unlikely to impact election results in the affected areas.

PG&E announced the upcoming Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) on Sunday night amid learning that weather would create critical fire conditions with low relative humidity, diminished moisture of vegetation and gusting wind conditions in parts of the Bay Area this week. PSPS occur when strong winds threaten to cause tree damage to equipment, which could spark a fire under the right conditions. For the current PSPS, 17 counties and three tribal areas will be affected.

Power shutoffs will begin at 7 p.m. local time on Tuesday at the earliest. Two polling places—the Calpine Geothermal Visitor Center in Lake County and Lakeside Elementary School in Los Gatos—are within the scope of the shutoffs.

PG&E spokesperson Jeff Smith told Newsweek that voting won’t be impacted, given that shutoffs aren’t expected at the polling locations until after polls close at 8 p.m. Smith said that no tabulation centers are within the blackout areas, so vote counts also won’t be impacted or delayed. However, all 48 tabulation centers and the two polling locations are stocked with a backup generator.

“We are staging temporary generation at both locations out of an abundance of caution,” a press release about the event said.

Smith added that if any other polling locations are added to the PSPS scope due to a change in the forecast, officials would assess the situation and provide backup power if needed.

More than 7.6 million Californians have already voted through early voting or mail-in ballots, NBC News reported.

Outages could last through early Friday morning. The planned outages come amid a slew of red flag warnings issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) office in San Fransisco on Monday, warning of strong winds and low humidity.

“The combination of the aforementioned winds and humidity will translate to fires…