Before the GOP "election reform" after Scrub's 2000 election we used ballot booths where you flipped levers. Same thing used for fifty years or so. Each machine kept an independent audit trail. If a machine broke down mid-election and couldn't be immediately fixed, it's pushed to the side and the others still work.
Those machines were widespread-I voted in Midwest and New England elections on them. They were banned as part of the so-called reform because they were old technology and it was supposedly getting harder to find qualified repairmen.
We've had this ballot shortage problem almost every election since then somewhere in my state. The ballots are expensive (over a buck each) and while the state oversees the process the local jurisdiction pays for them so they try to order "just enough."
Personally I'd love to see an honest, actual reform consisting of (a) bringing back those machines, (b) barring gerrymandering nation wide and (c) an honest, free, to get voter ID card that is readily available to all eligible persons.
That will never happen though. The GOP long concluded (rightfully) that low voter turnout usually favors them and they have been on a relentless, decades long campaign to suppress the vote (but not blatantly, for that is widely perceived as Un-American).