Dave Bangert, that historic journalist of the Wabash, wrote on October 22nd, 2026: County scrambles after voting machines left a candidate off ballots for nearly two weeks
The error found Wednesday affected more than 400 ballots, leading to possibility of a special election for Tippecanoe Township trustee after Nov. 3 results come out.
What a nightmare. And we’re aren’t the only county to suffer issues this election cycle. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:
- WTWO, October 2nd: Voting machine error causes issues with ballots in Knox County
- The Indiana Citizen, October 14th: REDO REQUIRED: Error on more than 100 ballots forcing some Hendricks County residents to revote
- WFYI, October 16th: Nearly 600 Floyd County voters receive incorrect ballots
As one does, I started a dialogue on Bangert’s substack piece.
Thanks, Dave.
“The mistake was caught early Wednesday afternoon when a candidate for Tippecanoe Township Board noted that the ballot on a voting machine at the County Office Building did not show the name of Holden Mugford, a Democrat who is running against Republican incumbent Bill Jones for the trustee’s office.”
It’s fascinating that it took another candidate to point this out to the people elected, appointed, and salaried to ensure that everything is in tip top shape for our elections.
It takes a village to raise a county.
As Mugford shared, transparency, especially proactive transparency, is absolutely critical in a democratic republic. And we need more of it here in Tippecanoe.
That should be our new Tippecanoe Way. Transparency.
Ben Carson (County Councilor, At-Large) wrote back:
To be fair, with some voting machine issues, you’ll only see them if the conditions are set up right to see them. So while I don’t know the specifics how the vote machines bugged, it’s possible that the only possible way to see the issue would be to stare at the ballot of someone coming into to vote. On the other hand, you may be completely right and it may have been something easily seeable and preventable. I am just glad that it was noticed (hopefully) early enough, though, to get fixed without a costly special election.
P.S. if I hear updates on what happened I’ll update you (and if you hear more let me know!)
I replied:
Thanks, Ben. To be fair, a robust quality control framework and process is not only possible and achievable, but necessary.
This is a solved problem.
Unit tests can be created to run through every possible scenario, generating each ballot possibility and testing it against the expected results.
And if this is truly a manual process, it’s still do-able. But it speaks to the electronic voting machine selection process not including technically competent individuals with the knowledge to ensure such robust testing processes were possible.
County Clerk Julie Roush, the Tippecanoe Election staff, and the Tippecanoe Election Board failed the voters of Tippecanoe County on this question. Simple as that. There may be excuses that account for this failure, but it is a failure none-the-less.
And I think Bangert covered the source of the cause: an administrative error as stated by Roush.
“Roush said her office was still trying to trace how the problem happened, calling it ‘an administrative error’ when election officials had to make corrections on ballots dealing with unopposed races in another part of the county days after early voting started.”
The precise cause will be found if there is a transparent and diligent audit of the data and actions taken when uploading the ballots to the machines.
I’m not saying this was intention or anything. It appears to be the result of low quality work performed by those in charge of the Tippecanoe elections.
And to think Clerk Roush now wants executive power in county by asking people to vote for her as Commissioner.
We get who we elect.
If I hear of more, I will be sure to pass it along, Ben. I appreciate you doing the same.
