By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Ellis County Clerk Donna Maskus is “thrilled” with Tuesday’s 57.41% local voter turnout.

“During the April primary, we had a 17% voter turnout, so we showed lots of improvement and that’s just great,” she said.

“We were running out of supplies at the 10 poll sites. All of them had high numbers,” Maskus said with a huge smile on her face. “It was a busy, busy day.”

The work is still not quite finished.

Maskus estimated about 257 provisional votes still remain to be tabulated, but said it “won’t be enough to change the results” of any races.

“The state is very strict on what’s eligible to be counted and what’s not,” she said.

The official canvassing of the votes is at 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 10, by the Ellis County Commission.

“We had lines,” Maskus said, “both on election day and here at the Ellis County Courthouse for advance voting. Even in Schoenchen, they had 100 ballots cast.”

The final unofficial vote tally was completed at 8:59 p.m. Tuesday evening. Three resolution boards of three people examined each paper ballot, which cannot be run through the county’s 650 Scanner machine, to “be sure the voter’s intent was recorded,” Maskus explained.

Maskus speculated there were more paper ballots than usual because of the high voter turnout.

“I heard it many times today (Tuesday), that people opted to use a paper ballot because they didn’t have time to wait in line for the electronic ballot machines. There were long (voter) lines, but people were very patient and I do appreciate that.”

Out of 17,881 registered voters in Ellis County, 10,265 ballots were cast.

Maskus credited her office staff, the poll workers and the resolution boards for making a long day an easy day.

“The results all came in about the same time. Everybody did a great job, and people in Ellis County can be very proud they exercised their right to vote,” she said.