The Bureau of Elections in Butler County found and corrected an error in the instructions for mail-in and absentee ballots that were sent to hundreds of voters.

The bureau discovered an incorrect return date in the instructions sent to fewer than 1,000 voters who requested mail-in or absentee ballots for the May 20 primary, and sent those voters correction letters with the accurate return date, which is the day of the primary, according to Chantell McCurdy, bureau director.

The correct return date was printed on the return envelope and some places in the instructions, but fewer than 1,000 copies of the instructions included the incorrect return date of Nov. 5, according to McCurdy.

She said the ballots with incorrect instructions represent a small portion of the 12,614 ballots that were mailed to voters as of Monday morning.

“As the error was only with the date, we mailed a correction letter to any voter who could have been affected by receiving the incorrect instructions,” McCurdy said.

She reminds voters all mail-in and absentee ballots for the primary must be returned by May 20 to be counted.

As of Friday, 3,311 voters had returned completed mail-in and absentee ballots, McCurdy said.

As of Monday, 141,804 people have registered to vote in the primary. Monday was the voter registration deadline for the primary. McCurdy said she would update the voter registration total Tuesday.