Secretary Sent Staff To City Hall After Calls, Emails Went Unanswered

Secretary of State William Galvin says he will most likely appoint a receiver to seize control of Boston's election division, after some city polling locations did not have enough ballots during Election Day, causing the secretary's office to send police cars, sirens blaring, to rush extra ballots to those locations.

"The concern I have is, they say they ran out. Well, there's no reason to run out. They had the ballots — they didn't distribute them properly," Galvin said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. "The reason was just poor planning, but most especially, lack of communication."

Galvin sent a letter to Eneida Tavares, chair of Boston's Election Commission, Wednesday afternoon announcing a state investigation into the "significant problems" with the supply of ballots at a number of polling locations in the city.

Galvin said his office, which oversees every local election office in the state, delivered the ballots to Boston in early October. From there, the city had to distribute them to more than 200 precincts.

Between five and 10 polling locations ran out of ballots around 5 p.m., he said — though he added that his office will conduct an investigation that could offer more insight on these details -- and the areas most affected were in Hyde Park, Roslindale, and West Roxbury. There was also one polling location in Dorchester that ran out of ballots Tuesday night.

[The Reporter spoke to several sources who have identified the Dorchester precinct in question as Ward 13, precinct 10 in Savin Hill.]

Galvin said his office tried calling and emailing the city's election division many times, but got no response all day. Finally, an official from his office went down in-person to the city's election office to coordinate the police response to get the ballots delivered.

"I think by using the police vehicles and getting it out there as rapidly as possible, we captured most of the people who wanted to vote," Galvin said. "And surely, since we did all this in the five to six o'clock hour, that gave an additional two hours for people to return to their polls, which tend to be right in their neighborhood area. But it's unacceptable that voters have to do that."

Galvin previously put Boston's election division under receivership in 2006, he said, after a similar issue with ballots disrupted Election Day. That year, he said, the issue arose in neighborhoods of Boston where high numbers of people of color live.

It was the election in which former Gov. Deval Patrick was elected as the first Black governor of Massachusetts, and Galvin said some precincts were "short changed" in getting to vote.

This year, he said, he believes the issue was resolved quickly enough that most people stayed in line to vote.

"Fortunately, in all of those areas, there were no local races that a small number of ballots could change. That's not the issue. The issue is the voter's rights. It's not about the candidates, it's about the ballot questions. It's about the voter's rights, which we want to protect," Galvin said.

The secretary's office provided the News Service with several pages worth of emails that members of their office sent internally and to city of Boston officials over the course of the day on Tuesday flagging issues with ballot availability around the city.

One from a supervisor in the secretary's office sent at 5:02 p.m. reads: "Voters and [a poll worker] called to inform our office that they have run out of ballots. They have been calling since 11AM and have apparently turned away some voters. Thank you."

Another email, from a voter into the Citizen Information Service general inbox at 6:27 p.m. said: "West Roxbury ward 20 precinct 5 had not had ballots for two hours. We were turned away and told they did not know when they would have ballots. This is absolutely unacceptable and is canceling people's right to vote!"

Galvin stressed at the press conference that the city of Boston had enough ballots, it just did not distribute them properly to its different polling locations -- especially those farthest from the downtown core of the city near City Hall.

"They shouldn't be in a vault in City Hall, they should be out there where voters need them," he said.

A spokesperson for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the city's initial review found there was a miscalculation in formulas to set ballot deliveries for precincts that would be processed ahead of Election Day through the central tabulation facility. After they discovered the issue, the city mobilized the Boston Police Department to deliver ballots, the Wu spokesperson said.

She said the city was in contact with the secretary's office throughout the evening and received guidance that since all voters in line by 8 p.m. would be able to vote, extending polling hours to permit provisional ballots after that time would not improve access to the ballot.

"The City takes our responsibility to effectively administer free and fair elections extremely seriously as the cornerstone for democratic participation. It is completely unacceptable for voters to experience undue delay at the polls, as any barriers in the voting process can lead to disenfranchisement. The City has begun a full audit into the delays from ballot shortages at polling locations during yesterday’s election, and will work closely with the Secretary of State’s office to support the state’s investigation so that the findings can deliver needed improvements to our voting system," Tavares said in a statement.

Galvin didn't say who he was considering to appoint as receiver of the city's election division, saying that he would wait to see how the investigation went.