By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
The Ellis County Commission, serving as the canvassing board for the 2024 General Election, approved more than 200 provisional ballots and accepted write-in candidates Monday, officially certifying the election.
Ellis County Clerk and Election Officer Bobbi Dreiling presented the canvassing board with 309 provisional ballots, of which 224 were accepted and 81 rejected.
Dreiling said of the 224 voters, 202 had changed their address, 12 had changed their name, and 10 were linked to various clerical errors.
All 224 were accepted and counted as part of the final election results.
The board rejected 81 provisional ballots because the voters were not registered in Ellis County.
Dreiling said election workers first try to locate the voter in the Ellis County poll books, and when they cannot, her office will attempt to locate those voters. If they are found not to be registered in Ellis County, the ballot is rejected.
“They now are registered to vote in all next upcoming elections, but their ballot at that time would not count because they weren't registered,” Dreiling said.
Four ballots were rejected because the voter does not live in Ellis County.
"When they filled out their voter registration, they put another county down as their address, and so those obviously couldn't be counted anywhere in my system," Dreiling said.
Dreiling said that in those cases, the voters get “credit” for voting in the election, but the vote does not count.
None of the races were changed with the addition of the provisional ballots.
The final voter tally in Ellis County was 13,412, with 20,431 registered voters for a turnout of 65.65%.
You can find the complete election results HERE.
Dreiling echoed her thoughts from election night, saying she was disappointed in the voter turnout.
Voter turnout in Ellis County surpassed the 2016 General Election turnout of 66.52% but was still short of the 73.72% turnout in 2020.
The canvassing board also approved the write-in votes.
Because of a Kansas law that requires write-in candidates at the county, district, state and federal levels to file an affidavit with the secretary of state’s office, only 12 write-in votes were counted. They were all in the race for president.
Dreiling said that in a follow-up meeting with the secretary of state’s office, they commended the county election officers for the way the election was run.
"The secretary of state's office did comment to us that it was probably one of the best run presidential elections that he's seen since he's been with the office," Dreiling said.
She added the same is true for the election in Ellis County.
"You're on pins and needles as an election official, hoping that there are no problems, and that dream came true for me that day we had no problems that made me run out to a polling site to see what was going on," Dreiling said. "Everything ran great."
Dreiling said her poll workers are a big reason everything ran smoothly.
"I'm going to always give a shout-out to them because they're the ones that make Election Day happen," Dreiling said.