IN the days before May’s local elections, South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils told people not to panic about rumoured delays over the delivery of postal votes. The packs should have arrived, the councils — who share the same returning officer and chief executive, David Buckle — said.

That, a new report reveals, was not true.

In fact the report, which covers a catalogue of blunders and foul-ups, shows that events on April 7 and onwards over printing these forms meant, in Mr Buckle’s own words “we were always going to struggle to keep the show on the road”.

Yet that was not the message put out by the councils over the May Bank holiday weekend. Quite frankly, the voting public was misled.

Initially yesterday South Oxfordshire District Council was ducking answering why you were not told the truth, before Mr Buckle responded late in the day, saying he believed it was correct at the time.

That too is worrying. While the report is hazy on when the councils discovered there was a problem, it is hugely concerning that senior election officials did not know there was an issue over people being able to cast their votes in an election just five days before the actual poll.

Some may shrug and say this was just a few thousand votes in parish and district council elections.

They miss the point entirely. No election should be carried out in this kind of shambolic fashion.

Remember too, the previous year thousands of polling cards in the Vale of White Horse area had the wrong details printed on them.

No doubt both councils will blame Paragon the printing firm for this year’s blunders but they are the organising authorities. They must take responsibility and show true accountability over both the election bungles and misleading the public.