What happens when two Texas counties forget to put a race on the ballot

At a time when confidence in elections is sagging, a particularly odd snafu in Texas this month won't help.

A virtually tied election for a spot on a regional appeals court will have to be conducted again — because officials in two counties under the court's jurisdiction did not put the contest on the ballot.

The election administrators in Cochran and Collingsworth counties, in the rural panhandle of north Texas, both filed papers this week admitting to a shared oversight and insisting they did not intentionally exclude the race from...