OTTAWA COUNTY, Mich. — The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to pass the county's Early Voting Agreement. The vote came around 12:30am Wednesday morning, six hours after the meeting began. During the three-plus hours of public comment, many residents also spoke in support of the plan.
Two weeks ago, the Board of Commissioners delayed the vote after Chairman Joe Moss said he had a number of questions about the plan that he wanted to square up before a vote.
FOX 17 sat down with Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck Tuesday afternoon, and he said since the last Board of Commissioners meeting on September 12th, he's had a number of productive conversations with commissioners, elections clerks, the Michigan Bureau of Elections, and local attorneys.
Out of those conversations, came an amendment to the Early Voting Plan, which includes a couple of minor changes and clarifications to the language, plus three other additions to the early voting process.
All of which, Roebuck fully supports.
The first, is the addition of at least one security camera at each early voting site. The camera(s) would be installed in the secure rooms where election equipment and materials are kept.
Clerk Roebuck explains these cameras can help "enhance the security and integrity of the process."
The second, is a live line-management tool on the County's website, so that voters will know projected wait times at each early voting center.
The third, is that early voting centers will use watermarked ballots, something that was discussed at length during the previous meeting.
Initially, Clerk Roebuck said his office wasn't sure it would be able to get enough of the proper paper stock to provide watermarked ballots county wide.
Roebuck explains that since then, they've been able to come up with other solutions to make that happen. He adds their goal is to have watermarked ballots in time for the state primary election in August of 2024, while the security cameras and the online wait-management page should be up and running in time for the presidential primary in February.
Commissioner Doug Zylstra (District 3) did try to remove watermarked ballots from tonight's vote, while asking for further discussion about how that would be funded. His motion did not receive a second.
At this time, it is not yet clear where the funding is coming from for these additions, but Roebuck says he hopes to see more state grants coming their way.
The original Early Voting Agreement also includes plans for four early voting sites, funding for one full time Elections Logistics Specialist, and funding for one temporary Elections Logistics Assistant. The total cost for the original plan is $769,094.
Roebuck says this plan was a collaborative effort with the 23 local county jurisdictions and the County Clerk's Office.
"It is saving significant taxpayer dollars to be able to do it collaboratively like this," says Roebuck, "and we're also saving the time and energy of each one of our local clerks who would have had to have done it on their own. So we're excited about that piece of the plan."
"I think for our voters, it presents a completely unified process where they will know when they can vote, how they can vote, and where."
Moving forward, the next immediate steps will be to determine the four early voting locations and make sure that all of these new additions are communicated to Ottawa County voters.
At the end of October, Clerk Roebuck and his team will also present this plan to the Secretary of State.
"We're in a challenging time right now, for our voters and for our community in many, many different ways," says Roebuck.
"But what I think is exciting is we can all come together and agree on something like a plan like this, we can all get behind a couple of very, very common interests that we have, which are free and fair elections, and the process to administer those elections in a way that's convenient for our voters."
This early voting plan is a requirement, after Michigan voters passed Proposal 2 in November of 2022, which adds 9 days of early voting, expands the number of drop boxes, creates a system of ballot tracking, and expands voter ID laws, among others.
Tuesday's meeting officially adjourned at 12:57am Wednesday morning, lasting about 6.5 hours. During the meeting, the board also voted to approve the controversial FY24 budget.
