“Hey, did you vote for Ellen?” Susan Lockhart asked her husband after they left the Floyd County 4-H Fairgrounds on the first day of early voting. Jerry Lockhart's answer, as she told Louisville Public Media: “There was no place to vote for Ellen.”

He wasn't wrong, and he wasn't alone. Ballots handed to voters in the Franklin, Greenville, Georgetown and Lafayette precincts between Tuesday, Oct. 6, and Thursday, Oct. 8, left off the Floyd County Commissioner District 1 race entirely, the contest between Republican incumbent Al Knable and Democratic challenger Ellen Morrison Kelley. At an emergency meeting Oct. 9, the Floyd County Election Board put the count at 572 voters, absentee ballots included. WDRB reported that a third of all ballots cast in the first two days of early voting were missing the race.

The remedy is a second trip

Affected voters are getting a letter and an ABS-5, the state's “statement concerning defective, lost, destroyed, or spoiled absentee ballot.” According to the News and Tribune, signing it cancels the original vote so the voter can go through the whole process again. Skip the form and the first ballot still counts, just without any say in District 1, WDRB reported, and the county will keep those first-days ballots separate on election night so nobody votes twice.

The letters arrived over the weekend. At the fairgrounds, election workers set up a separate check-in station and dedicated machines for people coming back, WDRB reported Wednesday night. Workers said several voters had already returned. “It's not a perfect world and things can happen,” Rick Cochran told the station.

Both candidates worry that not everyone will make it back. Kelley said a second trip is a lot to ask of people juggling “work and go to soccer practice and make sure the laundry's done,” and worried some would mistake the letter for a scam. Knable worried about voters who are out of town or have trouble getting around. He said he doesn't think the mix-up will change the outcome, “but even if it does, that's a meager consideration when you consider the fact that we might potentially disenfranchise some of these 572 folks.”

Who proofed the ballot?

That is the question the county hasn't answered. Officials told LPM that ballot information and styles are normally reviewed and proofed before they go out, and gave no reason this one slipped through. The county's ballot vendor reprogrammed the machines starting Oct. 9, per WDRB. In a statement reported by WLKY, the board said it is reviewing how the omission happened, whether every required procedure was followed and what new safeguards may be needed, and that it won't speculate on a cause until that review is done.

The alarm didn't come from that proofing. Kelley told the News and Tribune she was the one who brought the error to the board's attention after supporters contacted her that first Tuesday saying her race wasn't on their ballots. Knable said Shane Gibson, the board's Democratic appointee, called him about it Thursday night. Gibson said the board would investigate how it happened once affected voters were taken care of, but would not discuss who should be held accountable.

The three-member board is Floyd County Clerk Danita Burks, Gibson and Republican appointee Kristi Fox, an attorney. Burks, a Republican, is on the Nov. 3 ballot herself as a candidate for New Albany Township Trustee, according to the county's general election candidate list. The Floyd County Republican Party told WLKY that representatives of both parties reviewed the original ballots in a bipartisan process and that blame shouldn't fall along party lines. Fair enough. It also means two parties' worth of eyes looked at a ballot with a missing race and signed off.

Lockhart, the voter whose husband noticed, put it plainly: “There's no reason for the ballot to go out incomplete if that many people have their eyes on it.”

Errors happen. Explanations should too.

Knable, the man with the most at stake, has urged calm. “Errors do happen from time to time, and it's not always part of a sinister plot or anything like that,” he told WDRB, likening the board's fix-first approach to treating “a bleeding patient.” Nobody has offered evidence that this was anything other than a mistake, and the board deserves credit for owning it and apologizing within days.

But stopping the bleeding was a week ago. About 26,000 votes were cast in this commissioner race four years ago, so 572 voters is more than 2 percent of a typical turnout, in an election WDRB says is pacing near record early-vote levels for a midterm. None of the reporting so far includes a date for the board's review or a promise that its findings will be made public. Floyd County taxpayers fund this election office, and they shouldn't have to wait until after Nov. 3 to learn how a race vanished from their ballots.

Voters in Franklin, Greenville, Georgetown or Lafayette precincts who voted early Oct. 6 to 8 and haven't received a letter can call the Floyd County Election Division at (812) 948-5419. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.