County clerk reacts to President Biden's announcement not to seek reelection

With President Biden’s announcement Sunday that he would not seek reelection, some are worried if there is enough time to have the November ballots ready with a new Democratic candidate.

“How we plan has not changed; our process going forward will remain the same,” said Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck.

Despite President Biden’s announcement Sunday, it was business as usual at the Ottawa County Clerk’s Office.

State law requires that a major party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates be certified to the state one business day after the party’s national or state convention, meaning this year’s deadline for the Democrats is Aug. 26.

Justin Roebuck said, “It is a very time-intensive process. And it's also a process with very limited time in between deadlines. So federal law requires that we have to have ballots on hand for our military and our overseas voters 45 days prior to an election.” This year that is Sept. 21.

Roebuck says even if the president didn’t step down from running for reelection, they were always going to have less than a month to finalize the November ballots.

“So, we're really looking at a period of time that has not yet happened. So, we are still in the process of anticipating those conventions. Obviously, the national convention is the one that will choose which party nominees go forward,” said Roebuck.

He says a concern for him is a last-minute election lawsuit being filed, making getting the ballots finalized difficult. He says, “Those can always be challenging moments, too, because there is, again, that limited time frame in between the time where we receive all the candidate information and the time of ballots actually have to be printed and produced. And so those can be stressful moments for election administrators.”

Even though this is now an unprecedented presidential election, the clerk is confident that his office is and will be ready for whatever happens.

Roebuck says, “The public can rest assured that whoever the convention selects, you know, we will have enough time, and the process will still be in place to place that name on the ballot so that every voter is going to be able to have a ballot and cast their vote.”

Don’t forget, before the November general election is the August primary. That’s happening on Aug. 6 with early voting starting this weekend.

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