A squirrel was blamed for an Oct. 31 power outage at the Miami County Courthouse and Safety Building that forced the Board of Elections to ask voters to use paper ballots versus voting machines.

More than 400 people cast the paper ballots during first the power outage followed by a server outage. The power outage was from 9:15 a.m. until around 11 a.m. The election offices servers were out until late afternoon Oct. 31, election administrators said.

Voters who wanted to use a machine were asked to return.

The Secretary of State’s Office was told about the situation and kept updated as were election board members, elections Director Bev Kendall said.

“We had no problems,” she said.

A squirrel that got into a DP&L substation down the street from the courthouse caused the outage, said Chris Johnson, county director of operations and facilities.

While power was restored within a couple of hours, the county IT department worked in the evening to bring up computer servers at both buildings.

Work in county offices in both buildings was slowed during the day without access to computers. Phones also were out during the day.

The board of elections was updated on the outage at its Nov. 3 meeting.

The board at that meeting also approved the contract with West Milton Rotary to deploy and later pick up voting machines for the Nov. 8 election.

Eric Morgan, deputy elections director, said more than 17,000 people had voted early in the county as of the end of voting Nov. 2. The busiest day for that voting so far also was Nov. 2.