It was just a week ago when Election Day brought long lines and a lot of broken machines.

It turns out, the Board of Elections had some spares.

"We have spare scanners. That is correct," said Michael Ryan, executive director of the city's Board of Elections. When asked how many spare scanners there were, Ryan said, "We deployed 4,000 roughly, and I can get you the specific number of spares."

The Board of Elections had hundreds of those scanners squirreled away on reserve. Perhaps those extra machines could have reduced some of the long lines and chaos on Tuesday.

When asked if he understood that the public might be upset when they heard about the spare scanners, Ryan said, "The other piece of that puzzle, however, is, every one of our poll sites has to be surveyed in advance of an election for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And we have a federal court-appointed overseer that has to approve the layouts of our poll sites. So it's not so simple to just add a scanner and walk away."

Board officials did not tell us how many machines were not used on Tuesday, but it could be as many as 1,000. 

A board member in Manhattan said there were at least 300 there.  

"In Manhattan, we had over 300 scanners that were not deployed because there was not room for them in the poll site," said Board of Elections Commissioner Frederic Umane.

This all came to light following a routine board meeting on Tuesday, the first since Election Day. Members did not discuss any of the issues widely reported, and the meeting lasted seven minutes. 

Last week, the speaker of the City Council called on the board's executive director to resign. Ryan brushed it off on Tuesday.

"I don't make anything of the external dialogue that occurs," he said.

Of course, the Board of Elections says they are in the process of reviewing all the issues with last week's election. They say they will be transparent through the process.