“A major problem that was evident was the inability of the Boston Election Department to directly communicate, 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 ballots,” she concluded.
The Massachusetts secretary of state's office has ordered an overhaul of Boston’s elections practices after some city precincts didn't initially have enough printed ballots on Election Day in November.
Secretary of State William Galvin said Monday that an investigation determined that even though the city had a sufficient number of ballots, it failed to provide enough to several precincts ahead of time.
The city had planned to deliver ballots equal to about 80% of registered voters to every precinct, but a calculation error led to far fewer ballots being delivered, according to the investigation report.
“This resulted in voters in the City experiencing needless and unacceptable delays in voting and, in some cases, disfranchisement because the voter was unable to wait,” said the report's author, Rebecca Murray, who is the general counsel to the secretary of the commonwealth.
