cannot (force)merge bugs

[Karl Berry]

I sent (in separate msgs) to control@debbugs.gnu.org:

forcemerge 19615 60419
forcemerge 23639 49901

and for each, got back an error:
Processed (with 1 errors): forcemerge 19615 60419
Processed (with 1 errors): forcemerge 23639 49901

with no indication of what the error is.

Why can't forcemerge work? Help?

First I tried merge, which failed in the same way, although the latter
pair seems to meet the criteria for merging (the former pair
doesn't). But whatever. What troubles me much more is the opaque failure
of forcemerge. --thanks, karl.