Months before phantom ballots wrought havoc with the District’s primary elections, the Fenty administration was warned that the city’s election agency was critically low on funds to handle the polling, The Examiner has learned.
Documents and e-mails obtained by The Examiner also show that the Board of Election and Ethics spent six figures beyond its more than $6 million annual budget even though official requests for it had been denied.
The board still is trying to account for its handling of the Sept. 9 primary debacle, in which an election machine counted thousands of votes that hadn’t been cast. Officials are worried that the city will be overwhelmed by the expected record turnout of the November presidential elections.
D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, announced Monday that she has brought in a private law firm to lead an independent investigation into the failed primary. She told the media Monday that the night of Sept. 9 was plagued by “mistakes and chaos.”
E-mails obtained by The Examiner show that the election agency was in crisis months before the September primaries. By May, the agency had overspent its budget by $420,000. Some of the gap was offset by an unauthorized dip into public funds, according to internal documents.
In a June 3 e-mail, Fenty’s budget director Will Singer said election officials’ behavior was “disturbing.” He ordered his underlings “to sort out what the agency really needs here.”
Singer said Monday he was “not in a position to know” about turmoil in the election board.
By June, board of elections acting Executive Director Sylvia Goldsberry-Adams was warning the administration that conditions were critical.
“We have brainstormed ways to cut but we are being charged for everything from pencils to ballots,” she wrote in a June 10 memo. “With two major elections looming, the need for this funding is critical.”
