BOSTON — The secretary of state will appoint a receiver to oversee Boston’s election division after there were “serious problems” with the city’s administration of the 2024 state and federal elections, the secretary’s office said Monday.
An investigator inside Secretary of State William Galvin’s office ordered Boston to take specific steps to overhaul its practices and comply with state election laws, after last November 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.
Galvin will appoint a designee to assist Boston with election administration, and that person will remain in place through the 2025 and 2026 elections. The city has a mayoral race in 2025, when incumbent Democrat Michelle Wu is facing off against at least challenger Josh Kraft; and the state will elect a governor and U.S. senator in 2026. Gov. Maura Healey is planning to run for the corner office again in that election, and a number of Republicans are feeling out a potential race against the Democrat.
The investigator’s report, issued Monday, found that the city failed to distribute enough ballots to certain polling locations ahead of Election Day last November.
“The Boston Election Department failed to supply polling locations with a sufficient number of ballots causing some locations to run out of ballots for a significant period of time. 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,” the report states.
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