An error on some Bedford County election ballots had officials sending out replacements late last week, but ballots already returned remain valid, said Debra Brown, chief clerk/director of elections.

About 2,100 absentee and mail-in ballots contained an error with a party affiliation, Brown said, noting one of the candidates had cross-filed on both the Republican and Democratic ticket but the ballots sent out only referenced one party.

Because the ballots had to be corrected, officials took the opportunity to make another correction, this one due to a resignation on the elections board. Joy Lepako resigned her post on the board, and Rick Smith was appointed to fill her seat, Brown said.

Even without the party affiliation error, the county would have had to reprint the absentee and mail-in ballots to make the change, she said.

“Ballots have to be as accurate as possible,” Brown said. “If it would have been closer to the (election), there wouldn’t have been anything we could have done” to update the Board of Elections’ signatures found on the ballot. “The opportunity was there, so we did it,” she said.

The elections office made phone calls, sent out emails and posted a notice on the county’s election page to let voters know of the error and that replacement ballots were on the way.

The new ballots say “Replacement” on both the outside envelope and the inside portion.

Voters who have already filled out and returned the first ballot have two options:

ö Fill out the replacement ballot and send it in. The first ballot sent in by the voter will then be removed from the counting process, Brown said.

ö However, if a voter already submitted the ballot containing the error and doesn’t want to submit the replacement ballot, the voter’s original ballot will be counted.

“They are not thrown out,” Brown said, emphasizing the ballots will be cross checked to make sure the voter didn’t send in the replacement ballot. If they did not, the original ballot will be counted, she said.

Brown said voters who have an incorrect ballot but have not yet sent it in to the elections office, are being asked to destroy it and fill out and return the replacement ballot instead.

“No matter how they do it, their ballots will be counted,” she said.

Brown said some of the replacement ballots have already been returned to the county.

She said the county’s solicitor was informed of the ballot error and replacement plan as was the Department of state.

“We did our best to be transparent, to notify the public,” she said. “We didn’t really have a lot of complaints or anyone getting angry. … They understood.”

Bedford County has an Elections Ballot Drop Box at the Bedford County Courthouse Complex along Penn Street, between the main building and the parking garage.

It’s been in place since the 2020 presidential election, Brown said.

The box is emptied daily by two people who verify receipt of the ballots and run a report the following morning to make sure everything is correct and fair, she said.

“We have checks and balances for everything,” Brown said.

Ballots for in-person voting were not affected by the error, as those ballots were not yet printed, she said.