Galvin launches investigation into Boston after ballot shortage

Secretary of State William F. Galvin said Wednesday that he is launching an investigation into the City of Boston Election Commission after several polling places in the city did not receive enough ballots during Tuesday’s election, causing “unreasonable and unnecessary delays” for the city. voters have provided.

Galvin said the ballot shortage was just one of a number of “significant issues” hindering voting in Massachusetts’ largest city. The Brighton Democrat wrote in a letter to Eneida Tavares, the chair of the Boston Election Commission, that workers in counties experiencing a shortage of ballots eventually contacted his office to report the shortage because “they were unable contact” the committee itself.

“This indicates that the city did not originally deliver sufficient ballots to Boston precincts, did not have adequate communication channels with polling places, and did not have a plan to deliver additional ballots as needed and in a timely manner,” Galvin said. wrote.

He said it appears that short-term polling places eventually received ballots, but that nevertheless caused unreasonable delays.

“This is unacceptable and contrary to the most fundamental principles of our democratic process,” Galvin wrote.

City officials acknowledged the ballot shortage in a three-part social media post on X shortly before polls closed at 8 p.m., citing “strong turnout across Boston.”

Mayor Michelle Wu said Wednesday that the city is undergoing “a full debriefing and investigation” into exactly what happened.

“It is completely unacceptable that people have to wait for long periods of time without access to ballots,” Wu said. “On the one hand, having high voter turnout is a big deal, but we need to make sure we get on top of all these issues because protecting access to elections is the most fundamental part of our democracy.”

Wu said the city typically bases its turnout predictions — and therefore how many ballots will be delivered to each polling place — on figures from previous elections. She added that some polling places also ran out of ballots due to higher-than-expected turnout in 2006 and 2008, “but there should be a more seamless mechanism to allow them to be replenished before they completely run out in any location. ”

Wu did not elaborate on whether Tavares would face any repercussions. “I’m sure the priority was to make sure the ballots got to the polling stations as quickly as possible,” she said.

Tavares did not immediately respond to a Globe request for comment on Wednesday.

Depending on the outcome of the investigation, Galvin has the authority to appoint someone to the city’s elections board, effectively placing the office under receivership, said Deb O’Malley, a spokesperson for Galvin.

He took similar action in 2006, when the city agreed to be supervised by Galvin’s office during the 2008 presidential election, after acknowledging that the city had violated state laws when it was there during the election failed to provide sufficient ballot papers to the polling stations in November.

That year, Boston had distributed far fewer ballots than there were registered voters at its polling places, and the high turnout left more than three dozen polling places without ballots. In scenes similar to Tuesday, police cruisers had to shepherd ballots through rush-hour traffic in 2006.

Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based advocacy group, said Tuesday polling stations in Hyde Park and Roslindale are running low on ballots was a “colossal planning failure” that disenfranchised communities of color in Boston. Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the group’s executive director, said on Wednesday in a statement about X that the “buck stops with Secretary Galvin” for the trouble.

“If Secretary Galvin can take credit for success (in previous elections), he must also take the blame for his failures, including the disenfranchisement of Bostonians,” Espinoza-Madrigal said. “Ultimately, all responsible parties from front to back must be held accountable for the colossal failures on Election Day in Boston.”

A voter at a Jamaica Plain precinct also said the tabulator rejected their ballot twice when they tried to enter it into the machine Tuesday afternoon, the Globe previously reported. They said poll workers told them to put their ballots in a slot at the back of the machine, where they would later be retrieved and counted after the machine was repaired.

During Wednesday’s City Council meeting, council members filed several orders for a hearing examining voter accessibility and election preparedness in the city.

“Our democracy is becoming increasingly fragile in so many ways, and it is important and incumbent on all of us to do everything we can to ensure that everyone has access to democracy,” said City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, who chaired one of the hearings. organized. commissioned to investigate the matter.

Councilman Ed Flynn said he heard a story of a woman in Savin Hill who had to wait almost two hours before she received a ballot and could cast her vote.

“The pollsters were excellent. The manager was excellent. . . . They did their job,” Flynn said. “They didn’t have the leadership here at City Hall.”

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Matt Stout can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @mattpstout. Niki Griswold can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @nikigriswold.