The question is did you miss them?

Quick. What’s been missing from the pages of Numismatic News in the past four weeks?

Give up?

You should. I would not expect you to notice.

What has been missing has been a special section listing all 14 candidates for the American Numismatic Association board of governors as well as the candidates for president and vice president.

The election began with the receipt by members of the mailed ballots that were delivered in late May. Members have until July 1 to get them back to Survey and Ballot Systems in Eden Prairie, Minn., for tabulation.

In addition to 23 chapters of intriguing stories, you’ll also discover historical numismatic notes and tales related to the topics covered in each chapter.

It had been my intention to publish a special electoral section in an issue of Numismatic News as I have done for many years in the past.

This time it will not happen. I must apologize to the candidates for coming to this decision. But it was a necessary one.

The section simply would have occupied too much valuable space and it was my judgment that the three-quarters of the readers who are not ANA members would not appreciate the absence of the features that would have been displaced had I gone ahead and published the section.

I expect ANA members will make good use of the candidate biographies that were mailed to them along with their ballots, so it is not like they have had to cast their ballots blind.

Though the top officer spots are uncontested, having 14 candidates vying for seven seats on the board raises the possibility of wholesale turnover.

Any such sharp change might signal dissatisfaction with the way things are going. We’ll see.

The 2007 contest was the most recent one where throwing the bums out was at the top of the minds of most voters. That crisis passed. Present conditions are nowhere near as incendiary was what prevailed six years ago.

That likely means some sort of continuation of the status quo, though some candidates if they win would like to shake things up beyond the bounds that would be allowed by their legal counsel, who quite handily now has a desk at headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.

If you are not a member of ANA and hanker after the candidate biographies, I apologize to you, also, but at least there is a handy remedy provided by the Internet.

Go to the ANA website at www.money.org/communications/election-center. There you will find a list of the candidates, their individual biographies and a YouTube video of the candidate forum that was held in early May at the National Money Show in New Orleans.

I must commend the ANA on the logic and helpfulness of the various parts of their election-center web pages. It is well done and I expect that members who consult the pages will be more informed voters as a result.

And, yes, when the results are announced, I will publish them in Numismatic News and offer my good wishes to the winners.