Talk about an epic fail for DC's Board of Elections.
DC Mayor Vincent Gray had harsh words in a news conference Tuesday on behalf of the Board of Elections for the printing and distribution of the city's flag upside down on 305,164 voter registration guides.
Mayor Gray said the mistake has "tested severely" his faith in the organization.
”I don’t have a lot of evidence that I can point to at this stage that would lead me to have a lot of confidence in what’s going to happen between now and, of course, Nov. 4,” Gray said.
"I thought sending out our voter guide with the flag upside down was a complete fiasco."
Gray's apology comes after the organization's mistake went viral throughout the community:
The DC Board of Elections originally tried to promote the inverted flag error as a clever marketing strategy to make voters pay attention to the upcoming election.
"The plan is to put [the guide] on the website and ask voters to find the mistake," Denise Tolliver, a spokesperson for DCBOEE said to WAMU. "The hint would be that it's not the content [of the guide]."
Turns out the Board of Elections really did screw up; but that didn't stop the board from trying to get DC voters to read what was in the guide in a press release:
Well, we messed up. BIG time. The cover of the Voter’s Guide recently mailed to you had an image of the District’s flag turned upside down. That is our fault, and we apologize for displaying the flag in that manner. If that weren’t enough, we also fumbled our handling of the issue, and we apologize to you for that as well. That said, we put some really good stuff INSIDE the Guide; please read it.