To learn how we produced the 2026 election Q&A, read here.

Born in Kremmling, resident of Grand County since 1990.

Q: Following your first term, what experience best prepares you to manage the Clerk and Recorder’s Office? What are the three most important improvements you would pursue during your first year?

Well, I’ve got four years of experience where I’ve learned so much that it’s not going to be as hard for me to do another four years. But it took a long time, and everything changes all the time. But I’m sort of used to anticipate where those changes are coming from, and I have a great staff who help.

We could improve our, well, experience is one great teacher. So, I have to say, another four years of experience will improve everything in the office, but I would like to come up with a system to manage public record requests. That would help if I would improve that system. I would like to improve reliability in the office systems for the public’s mindset. And I would like to just maintain the very friendly atmosphere in my office.

Q: In your opinion, what are the most pertinent challenges facing the Clerk and Recorder’s Office today, and what would you do as Clerk and Recorder to solve them?

If I lose anybody that I have now, it would be best if I could find experienced help to hire because we are very short on that in the mountains. But otherwise, it takes quite a long time of learning before somebody can actually work. It depends in each section of my office, how much that is, but there’s always learning in every section.

Q: During your second term, what steps would you take to protect a citizen’s right to vote and their right to a fair election?

Well, we’ve always protected their right to vote and fair elections, and I cannot control the post office. So we will continue to do as we have done to comply with all the laws respecting voting.

Q: Grand County’s geography can make accessing government services inconvenient, especially for residents who live far from Hot Sulphur Springs. How would you make the Clerk and Recorder’s services more accessible to residents throughout the county, including seniors, working families and those with limited internet access?

We already have the kiosk at Safeway, but those kiosks are supposed to get a lot of work, a lot of use. So I’ve already inquired, and we don’t have enough use of our kiosk, because we are not as populated as other counties to put one in Kremmling, but we certainly could get information online that would give people more information before they come down. There’s a lot of different circumstances, but we could try and boil it down to: you may or may not need this whole list, but if it’s available, be a good idea to bring it.

Q: How should the office publicly report significant operational or election-related mistakes without diminishing confidence in the election process?

Well, certain mistakes that have to do with security are given are required to be reported right up to the Secretary of State’s office. I’m going to go back to what I need, and that is experienced help — then there shouldn’t be any. But this year we hired —and I continue to want to do that in the future — a company that’s going to print our ballots and mail our ballots, and that will cut down on a significant amount of work that our office doesn’t have to hire anyone to do. And we’ll save costs to pay for that by transferring that. And they are experienced, so I think that’s my number one.

Q: The KFFR Candidate Forum included discussion about outside consultants and state assistance with Grand County elections. What level of outside support is appropriate for a county of our size, and how should taxpayers evaluate whether that support is necessary and cost-effective?

So, the Secretary of State’s office is highly interested in everything going right, and it’s not unusual to get someone that they’ve hired, that has experience, to come help. Clerks, especially clerks that are new, and new includes a first-year clerk from four years ago, and this election, there’s going to be 22, I think, new clerks in the state. So Secretary of State’s office is going to be very busy, but that is, once again, back to my issues of experienced help and hiring a professional company to do some of that complicated stuff. And nobody should look down on the fact that people are helping. In fact, when I was first a clerk, the previous clerk and deputy clerk said they would help, and they came in and they did help for a period of two years until they had problems with in their lives.

Q: During the KFFR Candidate Forum, Newsom questioned the Clerk and Recorder’s choice to replace Dominion Voting with Clear Ballot. You said the previous Dominion contract expired in 2025 and that comparable pricing, usability and easier updates influenced the Clear Ballot selection. Would you like to provide any further comment?

So we got the new system. We had some training. Unfortunately, we cannot get on these things and play, but we did our election in June. We found we were a little bit foggy on what we were doing in November so far. We do want to avail ourselves of the online training, which is practice for these machines, and we can also have clerks be able to get on there and do that, so we get more comfortable with them. It’s not like we’ve had a long time experience with them, but the one thing I was very happy with in June, was that they were very well received by our voters and our election judges, because our other system was only really there for handicapped people. If they could not see a ballot, they could hear it. If they could not hear it, they could see it. If they couldn’t even speak, they could do the sip and puff method with it, and that is required in the state. But that machine was so complicated with its security seals and all that that our new one, we let people vote on, and we had at least five voters vote on that clear access machine in June, and I was thrilled that that happened because there’s a lot of people that would like to just do that. Others that are suspicious of it, so I’m happy that we had a good reception then, and we’ll continue to do that in the future.

Q: What are some common misconceptions about the Clerk and Recorder’s office today that you would like to address?

Well, Liz [Newsom] mentioned that we had like a 2.5 score on some Google thing, and when we looked at that, all those complaints were as they were from before my time, so that created a misconception that people are unhappy with my office, but they are not. So that needs to be retracted.