Hays Post
Ellis County officials conducted the election canvass at a special meeting on Thursday. This is the first year that city and school elections were held in the fall and Ellis County Clerk and Election Officer Donna Maskus said voter turnout was 39.61 percent.
“That is fairly good, usually we are under 20 percent,” said Maskus.
In 2015, for the last city and school election was also 20-percent voter turnout.
“This time it was a little bit unique because we had the improvement districts, the four improvement districts elected their directors at this election,” she said.
According to Maskus there were 87 provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are given to a voter when there is a question on the person’s eligibility. They are given a paper ballot to fill out and counted if it is determined the voter is eligible to vote.
Fourteen of the ballots were not counted according to Maskus. Thirteen of the voters were not registered in Ellis County and one person did not provide identification.
Of the 73 provisional ballots counted, Maskus said 70 of the voters had changed their address in Ellis County, one person changed their name, and two people had and had changed their name and address.
The canvass was originally scheduled for Monday’s commission meeting but was postponed to Thursday in part because of a large number of write-ins.
In the race for USD 388 School Board, Dean Gottschalk ran a successful write-in campaign and was one of three people elected to the board. He finished second and received 422 of the 479 write-in votes in Ellis County.
Maskus said she would like the commission to conduct future canvasses on Thursday in the future to deal with the increase in write-in candidates
“For precinct people, I just don’t know if we’re going to have a lot of people file for $20,” Makus said “I think it might be helpful for our process if we consider doing to the canvasses on Thursday.”
It will be up to the county commission to make a decision on the canvass date at a later time.
One race that was entirely based on write-in votes was the race for Schoenchen mayor and city council.
In the race for mayor, Kevin Bieker received 19 votes and Richard Klaus got 14.
There were five open seats on the city council. Thomas Cole Dinges received the most votes with 28, Kyle Zimmerman was second with 22, Matt Grabbe received 19, LaVerne Dreiling 14 and Kevin Bieker 10.
Bieker will have to choose what office he wants to serve in. If he chooses mayor, Ron Sauer, who received the sixth most votes for council, will take a seat on the council.