Last week, Westmoreland County officials were spouting optimism and confidence when it came to the general election.

“We’re not getting the same calls and don’t have the same concerns we did,” Commissioner Sean Kertes said. “Overall, our customer service has increased, and it just shows we now have the proper structure in place.”

Those “concerns” came after experienced elections director Beth Lechman resigned in August 2020. The ensuing three months saw operations leading up to the presidential election fall under first the deputy director, Scott Sistek, and then a brand new leader, JoAnn Sebastiani, transferred over from the tax office.

But Sistek was fired in September with barely a month until ballots were cast. Sebastiani made it through the contentious election but was fired in June, not long after the 2021 primary. She filed a federal lawsuit against the county in August claiming commissioners made her a scapegoat.

While Lechman has since landed a new job in Centre County, Westmoreland went into the 2020 general election with no one hired to lead the elections bureau, which temporarily became the responsibility of public works director Greg McCloskey. Commissioners did, however, hire a quality assurance manager who also would be tasked with keeping an eye on the elections.

Everything was fine, Kertes said last week. It’s good. No problems.

On Monday, the story shifted a bit.

The county had to pay more than $8,000 in postage because of a mistake on ballots sent to just two precincts in Mt. Pleasant. Mail-in and absentee ballots sent to 151 people asked voters to pick one of the two people running for two borough council seats. The problem? There were actually two seats open.

Well, these things happen. And it was just one race? No big deal. But it wasn’t just one race. Exactly the same situation unfolded for both the First Ward and Third Ward.

This meant creating new ballots. Sending the new ballots. Explaining what happened. Providing prepaid overnight envelopes to get the corrected ballots back in time at a cost of $27.10 apiece.

But hey, Kertes obviously didn’t know about this when confidently proclaiming how well things were running, right? Unlikely, as the letters to those 151 voters explaining the county’s error were dated Oct. 26.

In municipal races, a winner can frequently be decided by just a vote or two, so 151 mistaken ballots had the potential of making a major difference in those two wards. The mistake might also be forgiven if the county had not faced issues with 2020 ballots being mailed out on schedule because of problems with Ohio printer Midwest Direct. Then there were problems with 14 write-in winners in this year’s primary not being included in final results, forcing recertification.

The county has been spinning election problems as not being real problems for two years, but the only thing that seems to be changing is the nameplate on the desk of the elections bureau director. Voters deserve an election that merits real confidence.

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