Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin will appoint a receiver to oversee Boston’s election division in the wake of “serious problems” with the city’s admin-istration of the 2024 state and federal elections, his of-fice said on Monday.

In a related move, an investigator in the office ordered Boston to take specific steps to overhaul practices and comply with state laws, after some city polling locations did not have enough ballots during Election Day last No-vember — causing the secretary’s office to send police cars, sirens blaring, to rush extra ballots to those loca-tions.

The report, issued Monday by the appointed investigator, Rebecca Murray, the office’s general counsel, found that “The Boston Election Department failed to supply poll-ing locations with a sufficient number of ballots causing some locations to run out of ballots for a significant pe-riod of time. This resulted in voters in the City experi-encing needless and unacceptable delays in voting and, in some cases, disfranchisement because the voter was una-ble to wait,” Murray wrote. The report also identified se-vere communication failures.

Many precincts were unable to reach the Election Department due to overwhelmed phone lines, delaying bal-lot resupply efforts. A backlog of unconnected calls left election workers unable to report the missing ballots to the city’s Elections Division, exacerbating the shortages, it found.

The city says that it also provides cellphones to each polling location but did not say whether they were used in this instance, the report says.

“A major problem that was evident was the inability of the Boston Election Department to directly communi-cate, in real time, with each voting precinct in order to determine and prioritize those locations that had run out of ballots or had an immediate need for additional bal-lots,” it says.

State officials, upon being notified, intervened by dis-patching representatives and coordinating emergency ballot deliveries with the Boston Police Department.

Murray also found that election workers were not ade-quately trained on how to respond to ballot shortages or machine malfunctions. The secretary’s report criticized city election preparation and called for comprehensive training reforms.
“While this Office recognizes and acknowledges that the City of Boston has many dedicated and committed elec-tion workers, I have found that many of the problems are a result of inadequate training materials that do not ade-quately cover contingencies experienced in this elec-tion,” Murray wrote in the report.

Following his receival of Murray’s report, Galvin issued his order for Boston’s election division to be overseen by a designee he assigns. His order also requires that the election division provide a plan, subject to the secretary’s approval, to establish a designated team of city staff to contact polling locations throughout Election Day to check in on voter turnout, ballot supply voter machine is-sues, and other matters.

The city is required to develop comprehensive training programs for poll workers and wardens, create a plan for pre- and post-election day issues, and ensure that war-dens can communicate with each other.

After the 2026 state election, a review will be conducted about whether the order will be extended, it says.

On Tuesday, when asked about Galvin’s order, Mayor Wu said, “We welcome the continued collaboration with the Secretary’s office to ensure that not just this next election goes very smoothly, but that we’re really supporting the [Election] department overall and putting in place practices that will benefit in all future elections.”

This isn’t the first time Galvin has put Boston’s election division under receivership. In 2006, after a similar issue with ballots disrupted Election Day, he also appointed a designee to oversee the city’s election process.

That year, he said, the issue arose in neighborhoods of Boston where high numbers of people of color live, concerning himself and others about disenfranchisement among communities of color.

Galvin’s office said some of the language in Monday’s order is similar to that used following the 2006 investi-gation.
A Boston resident himself, Galvin hasn’t said if he’ll be on the ballot next year. In 2022, just prior to winning reelection to his eighth term, Galvin told the Boston Globe that if he won “quite likely, I will not run again.”

The city has a mayoral race this year, with Mayor Wu facing off against at least challenger Josh Kraft; and in 2026 the state will hold legislative elections and elect a governor, constitutional officers, and a US senator.

The Reporter’s Seth Daniel contributed to this report.