BOSTON — Massachusetts’ top election boss is lashing out at Donald Trump after the president vowed to kill off mail-in voting nationwide, even as questions still swirl about Boston’s own chaotic ballot history.

Trump, posting to Truth Social, promised to “lead a movement” and even sign an executive order to wipe out vote-by-mail before next year’s midterms. That threat set off Secretary of State Bill Galvin, who has overseen Bay State elections for three decades.

“Responding to his rhetoric is a waste of time,” Galvin snapped in an interview with GBH. “He lies all the time and he exaggerates all the time, so there’s no point to it.”

Galvin insists Massachusetts has “proven” mail-in ballots are safe, pointing to the 2024 election where more than a third of voters mailed their ballots in November and nearly two-thirds did so in the September primary. But not everyone is convinced — and the chaos of Boston’s recent voting scandals hasn’t helped.

Last year’s state election saw polling places across the city run out of ballots entirely, leaving frustrated voters waiting in lines while police rushed paper ballots from precinct to precinct. At least 14 polling locations reported shortages, forcing frantic measures that critics said looked more like a Third World election than a modern democracy. The debacle triggered an investigation and talk of putting Boston’s Elections Department into a form of receivership after repeated failures.

Then came whispers of “Boston Ballot-Gate” — reports of duplicate ballots sent to households, mismatched voter rolls, and confusion so widespread that Galvin’s office had to step in. While officials downplayed the problems as clerical errors, the episodes fed suspicions that the system is far from airtight.

Trump, seizing on that kind of chaos, is now using it to fuel his crusade. He not only vowed to end mail-in voting, but also took aim at electronic machines — even though Massachusetts relies exclusively on paper ballots.

Galvin, a Boston Democrat in office since the 1990s, brushed off the attacks as political theater. “We have protocols in place to protect voters, make sure nobody takes advantage of them, and any evidence of any kind of impropriety, we move on quickly,” he said.

Still, the tension is unmistakable. A proposed 2026 ballot question could strip away no-excuse mail voting in Massachusetts and return to the tighter absentee system. That means Bay Staters may be the ones to decide whether mail-in voting survives here, regardless of what Trump or Galvin vow to do.

For now, the ballot battle lines are drawn: Trump promising to torch vote-by-mail across America, and Massachusetts’ election boss daring him to try — even as Boston’s own messy record fuels suspicion that the system isn’t as flawless as Galvin insists.