<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/10/1603747534924.jpeg" alt="Bobbi Dreiling" />
 <figcaption>Bobbi Dreiling</figcaption>
 </figure>Compiled by Cristina Janney/Hays PostAge: 57Party: Republican Experience?&nbsp; I have worked as the Ellis County Deputy Clerk since January of 2013. I have worked right underneath the Clerk as her deputy for eight years in January.Why are you running for the Clerk’s Office? Because I know the office. You definitely need experience in the office. I enjoy serving the public. I enjoy working with people. Ellis County in general is a great employer to work for. I really like the job — being deputy right now.What do you think the Clerk can do to promote higher voter turnout? We can promote it by doing public announcements. Letting [voters] know when advance voting is taking place. Letting them know where it is at and the hours and know where their poll sites are. Unfortunately, the budget does not allow for a lot of advertising.&nbsp;Going to certain groups like the Hays Chamber and seeing if they can help promote it. I would also promote elections and voter registration by continuing to go to the high school and talking with juniors and seniors on voting and getting them registered to vote.&nbsp;I am going to work closely with the nursing/assisted living homes on permanent advanced voting. I would work with the administrators of those places so residents have the proper forms filled out for permanent advanced voting.What do you think the Clerk can do to secure election results? I am member of Election Infrastructure Information Sharing, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. We get security alerts from the Department of Homeland Security.&nbsp;When that big story broke about Iran and Russia, we were notified of that to be on a telephone conference call about that, along with our IT department. I know just being a member of that organization helps keep us abreast of what is going on out there as far as any security breaches.&nbsp;We also work closely with our IT department. We work hand and hand with them to make sure we have all our firewalls and security that we need to keep the voter registration safe. That comes along with direction from the Secretary of State's Office. They let us know when there are security breaches, what is going on about the county or any security breaches other counties might have.What can be done to ensure the accuracy of election results and their reporting? With our new election equipment, it is really easy to ensure accurate results, because No. 1 it is totally paper based. With what we get through advance voting and people putting their ballots in that gives us a total number. Those two need to match up. If they don't, we start going through the ballots one by one.&nbsp;When the polling sites bring in their ballots along with the results, those need to match up with the ballots that are voted. They need to match up with what is on the USB for the results. It also needs to match up with the poll books on which people were checked in. It is three tiers at the poll sites. You have your poll pads, which need to match up with what your ballots are, and your ballots need to match up with your report that comes off the USB as it was fed in.We are now required by the Secretary of State to have an audit after the election. With this General Election, they let us know what we need to audit. What that means is that we have to pick 1 percent of our precincts, which is one. We have to literally go through every ballot and make sure it matches with what was brought in to us.&nbsp;We literally hand by hand go through. Say it is Ward 1 Precinct 1, we have to get every ballot and make sure the totals that were taken off Election Day at the poll site matches exactly what we ran off.&nbsp;We then report those results to the state. We have gone through two audits, and we have been fine on each one of them. We had no issues with matching up with what the poll sites said we should have.In what other ways do you think the Clerk’s Office functions and service to the community can be improved? Just letting the community know we are the passport agent. I am not saying there is no room for improvement, but right now we do a really good job at that.Our office is also responsible for setting the levies every year to make sure the taxpayers pay the correct amount of taxes. That is a function of our office that is very crucial. I am not saying there haven't been mistakes in the past, but in the last five or six years, we have really refined our process in getting that done and getting that done as quickly as we can, bar other circumstances that are beyond our control.&nbsp;When people call about specials on their real estate, we give them that information. Our office is one that gets almost every phone call that we either help or we direct to the Appraiser or Register of Deeds.Why do you think you are more qualified than your opponent? &nbsp;No. 1, I have almost eight years of experience. Coming into this office almost eight years ago, I had no idea what that office was responsible for. I had no idea it entailed as much of the election. I had no idea what goes on behind the scenes to run an election. Paying my taxes every year, I had no idea how those numbers came about. Working through it the last eight years, it is a difficult process — one that takes expertise.If I had walked into that office with no one in front of me showing me, I am not saying the county would have stopped, it is a process you have to have someone leading in front of you. It would take a process to learn it by yourself.I definitely have that over my opponent — the eight years of how that process runs.Editor's note: Mail-in ballots went out in Ellis County for the 2020 General Election that listed the Kansas Senate race as the U.S. Senate race. Dreiling is referencing that error in the answer to the next question.<a href="https://hayspost.com/posts/0966a88e-644e-41e4-9191-6bbb0f57ac0e">See Related Story: Ellis Co. ballot misprint could be issue if Bollier, Marshall race is close</a>Write-in candidate Laura Allen has been critical of the current clerk's administration of this election. Would you like to address that? I would rather not because that is the County Clerk's position. We literally do the best that we can. Mistakes do happen. This mistake that happened was one that was correctable and one that we are continuing working through.&nbsp;Unfortunately our office is not perfect. We are working through this process of correcting it, and we have already done that.&nbsp;

Ellis County Clerk Candidate: Bobbi Dreiling