November 27th, 2024

City Council rejects elections receivership recommendation

Pursues hearing as state investigates ballot shortages

A proposed resolution in the Boston City Council to advise the state to put the city of Boston’s Election Department under receivership following election day issues failed to pass at the body’s Nov. 20 meeting amid concerns that the action was premature.

The resolution, which was proposed by District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn and at-large Councilor Erin Murphy, was spurred by election day challenges, when the city failed to distribute all the ballots it had received from the state, resulting in delays and long lines at individual polling locations — largely in Hyde Park, Roslindale and West Roxbury — that ran out of ballots.

When voters, poll workers and staff from the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth — the top election official in the state — tried to call the city’s Election Department, they said those calls weren’t picked up.

The Council resolution received two votes in the affirmative and seven in the negative, with the remaining four councilors voting “present.” Efforts to pass the resolution were hampered by discussion of whether the proposed measure should wait, pending other efforts to delve into the events.

“Going straight to a state receivership resolution, I just think it’s a bit premature at this point,” said at-large City Councilor Julia Mejia at the meeting.

Both the Wu administration and the state are pursuing investigations and the City Council scheduled a hearing for the afternoon of Dec. 6 (at-large City Councilor Erin Murphy, one of the sponsors of the resolution, said this proposed action was filed before a date had been set for that hearing).

Even if it had passed, the proposed City Council resolution would have had little immediate effect on the process of appointing a receiver, which is under the control of Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, an action, he said, he is considering pursuing.

At a press conference, Nov. 6, Galvin said his office was opening an official investigation into the events on election day, and had sent a letter to Enida Tavares, who heads the city’s Election Commission, informing her of the inquiry.

Galvin called the lack of ballots at precincts across part of the city “unacceptable” and said it would not be tolerated.

The city of Boston has said that, per an initial city review, the lack of ballots stemmed from a miscalculation in the formulas used to set ballot deliveries for precincts.

At that event, he said he will determine whether or not to appoint a receiver pending that investigation, but he anticipates that outcome.

“This [investigation] is necessary,” Galvin said. “We want to ensure that going forward in the elections to be held next year and the year after that this situation never occurs again.”

Galvin said that, in response to the lack of ballots at the precincts and the limited communication, he sent a representative from his office to the Election Department, which led to more ballots being sent out to the polling locations in need using police vehicles with sirens on.

Through that action, he said, he anticipates few voters didn’t get the chance to vote. Staff at the polling location were directed to get contact information of any prospective voters who had to leave, and the issue was largely resolved by 6 p.m., leaving two hours for residents to cast their votes before polls closed.

“It’s not about the candidates or even the questions, it’s about the voters’ rights — which we want to protect — and it’s about the procedure. We shouldn’t have to do this, especially when we’ve done it before,” Galvin said, referring to other instances in recent memory that the state stepped in to monitor the city’s Election Department.

In 2006, following the gubernatorial election in which Duval Patrick won his spot in the governor’s office, Galvin appointed a receiver due to similar circumstances. In that election, about 30 precincts in Boston — mostly in heavily minority areas — reported running out of ballots at the polling locations, according to reporting at the time by the Boston Globe, an incident that followed years of challenges that included limited interpreters and multilingual materials at some polling places, which led to a lawsuit brought against the city in 2005.

In 2021, during the mayoral preliminary election that September, Galvin said his office had to send staff to the city’s Election Department to ensure the counting of ballots was reconciled with mail-in ballots. That action did not result in the appointment of a receiver.

“There is a long history here that should have resulted in better conduct. Unfortunately, that’s not the case,” he said.

Locally, city councilors largely called on each other to give the Election Department grace, citing the challenge of managing a city-wide election, especially one that Galvin predicted, ahead of time, would see record turnout.

“Our commissioner, in my opinion, in my interactions with her, has done tremendous work. It’s pretty intense to have all of that come out — you have to run an entire department and that’s a lot,” said District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson during the meeting. “Offering grace would mean we go into further conversation.”

Fernandes Anderson, who voted “present,” pointed to existing relationships between the Council and the Election Department and said that she was not necessarily against the resolution but wanted more conversation before passing it.

In her remarks, Mejia, who also voted “present,” said she thought jumping to a receivership recommendation was “a bit abrupt and a bit hostile,” recommending taking more time before supporting receivership. In her argument, she pointed to the 2022 fight to prevent the receivership of Boston Public Schools.

“I’ve seen what that looks like and I don’t know if we have enough information, prior to having a hearing. I would recommend to my colleagues — and I understand the intent of what we’re trying to do here — I would make a friendly recommendation to my colleagues to reconsider putting this on the floor for a vote,” Mejia said.

A state receivership in election departments is not unheard of. In 2018, Galvin took over control of the election departments in both Lawrence and Lowell ahead of that November’s election citing concerns about the division’s top official in the case of the former and concerns about that September’s preliminary election in the case of the latter.

In this election, he said the city should have been prepared — ballots were delivered to the city in October, he said — and the day before the election his office provided instructions on how and when to put out ballots.

He also pointed to other municipalities across the region and the state this November with similarly complex operations that didn’t have the same issues that Boston faced.

“We had other communities that have large populations, large numbers of active voters, in large geographies — the city of Worcester, the city of Cambridge that has multiple ballots because of the number of districts that are incorporated into Cambridge — none of them had those problems,” Galvin said. “The reason is they followed proper procedure.”

ballot shortages, boston city council, election receivership