Well, so much for questions about whether enormous mistakes may occur in handling presidential election ballots. One already has.

It was reported last week that nearly 50,000 — 50,000! ­– voters in Franklin County, Ohio, received incorrect mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 election. The county is home to Ohio’s capital, Columbus.

Franklin County election officials mailed out about 240,000 ballots. But, they said, someone made a mistake in changing the setting on a machine used to insert ballots into envelopes. As a result, nearly 50,000 people received ballots including the wrong congressional race for where they lived.

So much for the bad news. Now the good news. Once the mistake was noticed, the Franklin County Board of Elections acted quickly to rectify the error. Postcards were to be mailed to all the affected voters, letting them know of the problem and telling them what they can do about it. One option is for them to vote in person, either through Ohio’s early voting program or on Election Day. Another is to obtain the correct ballot for where they live.

Officials said safeguards are in place to ensure people can vote only once. We hope that is true.

We understand mistakes will happen. But Americans simply must be able to have faith in the process — especially this year. Incidents such as the one noted above do not help.