JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – A coalition of local lawyers and voting rights advocates met with the Hinds County Election Commission on Monday to ask questions and discuss possible solutions after ballot shortages during the General Election.

It was a meandering and often confusing two hours that the advocates met with the commission, but both parties left with optimism for next year’s elections.

The commissioners said the ballot shortage was caused by an error in the ballot ordering process. As they have explained before, not enough ballots were sent to certain split precincts.

The commission also said they printed off ballots for 70% of registered votes, which is 10% more than was it mandated by law. They also shared that they received the ballots about a week before election day, but they did not receive any proofs before then to confirm they received the correct ballots.

Hinds County Election Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Horton said she’s confident the county will not make this mistake again.

“We apologize for use the wrong one. But what I will talk about, what came out of this meeting is a spirit of working together. And I get that from them. As a matter of fact, at the last meeting, we had one of the members of coalition say they are people who are not. And we all agree with all of you. We don’t agree with everything they say because there were issues around us. They were not our issues,” said Horton.

Moving forward, the commission hopes to tweak the contract they are currently in with ES&S, which is the election system software that also handles ballot printing. They also hope to receive more hands-on training from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office.