"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 74

In this episode: In One Michigan County There’s a Republican Fighting to Restore Faith in Elections

October 29, 2024

"In the Room with Peter Bergen" transcript: Episode 74

Episode 74: In One Michigan County There’s a Republican Fighting to Restore Faith in Elections

Justin Roebuck, a county clerk in the swing state of Michigan, has a license plate that says ‘’I voted.” Roebuck first began volunteering as an election worker at age 16. Now, he oversees the election process in Ottawa County. But not everyone in his county shares his faith in the voting system. Like election officials all around the United States, he’s gotten accustomed to a high degree of skepticism about his integrity — and the elections he oversees. And he’s on a mission to restore the trust that’s been lost. So how did trust break down? And what’s at stake if it can’t be restored in a place like Ottawa County?

Please note: Our show is produced for the ear and made to be heard. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the audio before quoting in print.

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Joe Moss: I’d like to call this meeting of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners to order…

A meeting this fall of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners in Western Michigan began as most of these meetings here do.

Joe Moss: So if, uh, Pastor Davies could get us started, that would be great.

With a prayer.

Pastor Davies: Father, we come before you tonight. We ask for your blessing. We have no good apart from you. So we ask that you would come and give these servants your wisdom and help them to lead.

Attendees: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…

After the Pledge of Allegiance.

Attendees: …and to the Republic for which it stands…

And a quick roll call.

Justin Roebuck: Mr. Kleinjans, here, Mr. Zylstra, here, Mr. Bonnema, here….

The meeting got underway with time for public comment.

Joe Moss: And if I could just offer a reminder to state your name and jurisdiction when you come forward, you'll have three minutes.

Bruce Greenlee: My name is Bruce Greenlee. I live in Park Township. It would be great if we would do standard business practices with elections.

Doubts about the election process come up a lot at these meetings now. And one community member got up to say she was worried about the integrity of the upcoming presidential election.

Kristin Doornbos: My name is Kristin Doornbos. I love this county. Something I do care about is our elections.

And she had a request for the county clerk — something she thought would make the process more secure.

Kristin Doornbos: I'm here for a final plea with the Board of Commissioners and the public to urge our clerks, our local clerks and our county clerk to potentially turn on our scanners to take a full ballot image scan of the ballot at the time of the election.

This image scanning she's referring to, is technology that allows the tabulator machine to take a digital image — essentially a photograph of the ballot and store it. At these meetings people don’t just question the voting machines, they also question the accuracy of the voter rolls, how the ballots are stored. All kinds of things.

ARCHIVAL Gin Greenlee: We do know that there has been election fraud. Are people awake enough to know that we are losing our country. What are we doing at the county level?

And there’s one guy who has to answer all those questions. Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck. He’s in charge of elections for the county.

Justin Roebuck: I've spent a good deal of my career and my life caring about this process and trying to make it better. I think the scrutiny on the process has changed a lot over the past few years in terms of public confidence in the election process.

He’s served in the position since 2014.

Justin Roebuck: I don't know that there are a lot of election officials that said, you know I grew up and my buddy wanted to be a fireman and I wanted to be a county clerk.

Peter Bergen: [LAUGHS]

Justin Roebuck: I was a nerdy kid though. I was a nerdy little kid. I loved politics. I remember, canvassing neighborhoods and passing out literature for political candidates on my bicycle.

As county clerk he oversees the election process for 23 cities and townships in this part of Western Michigan. That means training about 1,200 election workers, printing the ballots, accumulating the results and sending them to the state to be certified. A job that comes with a lot more scrutiny these days, especially in a swing state like Michigan.

Justin Roebuck: The challenge is real and the struggle is real, and certainly folks are upset and it's hard sometimes to deal with that. But I think ultimately what matters most is that we project a process that is trustworthy and that it's full of integrity and that we keep having those conversations with our community.

But he’s gotten accustomed to skepticism about his integrity and the elections he oversees. It’s something lots of local election officials have experienced — not just in Ottawa County but all over the United States.

Justin Roebuck: I've been called a traitor and a liar and things like that. But ultimately, I don't go through my day worried about those things. I think we live in a beautiful community and we have a really important job to do that needs to get done.

So Roebuck’s been on a mission to convert all the doubters so he can get that job done.

Justin Roebuck: It's not that elections have not been contentious before because they have, but the attention and the focus has turned on the process of administering the election; it's the political parties actually coming against the administrators.

The party coming against him is his own. Roebuck is a Republican, elected to his position in a red county. It’s a county that Donald Trump won by more than 21 percentage points in the last presidential election. A county that takes pride in faith and family, a county full of contradictions, where Republicans are accusing one another of lying about the integrity of elections.

Roebuck’s confidence in the integrity of the election process is now quite rare in his own party. In a recent Gallup poll, just 28% of Republicans say they have faith in the accuracy of the vote. That’s not surprising really since there's been no shortage of people saying the election process isn’t secure. And lots of people here in Ottawa County have gotten the message.

So we’re going to spend this episode in western Michigan, because this kind of distrust that exists in Ottawa County, well, that's something a lot of counties around the country are also experiencing. And it’s Iocal clerks like Roebuck who are now on the frontlines, responsible for addressing the questions and concerns about every aspect of the voting process — a process that Roebuck has enormous faith in.

Justin Roebuck: I definitely remember the day after my 18th birthday being in my local clerk's office, registering to vote, and casting my first ballot. Yeah, I never doubted the validity or the integrity of that process. All through my voting experience, including the last time I voted, which was a few months ago.

So how did trust break down in Ottawa County? What’s Roebuck doing to win it back? And what’s at stake if trust can’t be restored in a place like Ottawa County?

I'm Peter Bergen and this is In the Room.

[THEME MUSIC]

Ottawa County is in the western part of Michigan, about a three and a half hour drive from Chicago. The county is one of the state's biggest agricultural producers and also includes the Lake Michigan shoreline cities of Holland and Grand Haven, which are known for their beaches.

ARCHIVAL Voiceover: Feel the breeze of the Great Lakes on your face. Soaking up the nature of pure western Michigan.

Justin Roebuck: It's a beautiful place.

ARCHIVAL Lindy: Welcome to Grand Haven, Michigan.

Justin Roebuck: It's a place a lot of people spend a summer vacation.

ARCHIVAL Lindy: Hi, I'm Lindy. Let me show you why this little town was voted number one happiest seaside town in America.

Justin Roebuck: I mean, it's 30 miles of beautiful Lake Michigan coastline, but it's a conservative place. I mean, we are rooted in this Dutch Christian reform migration that happened, in the early and mid 1800’s, and still a very strong element of conservative worldview, I guess, that governs this place.

As you drive around different parts of this county, you'll see those beautiful beaches that Justin Roebuck describes, as well as acres and acres of farmland. Also, lots of churches. Painted on the side of one warehouse is a gigantic American flag and the words “In God We Trust.” This is a predominantly white county, mostly Republican, although there’s one area that leans Democratic.

Justin Roebuck: We're a relatively prosperous community as well. You know I think, what I value and I say this to our team as well, you know, what do we want people to say? I have a six-year-old and a nine-year-old. What do I want them to say later in life when they say, ‘Yeah, that's because I grew up here. That's because I grew up in Ottawa County.’ What are the values that we need to impart?

He lives and breathes elections. Even his license plate says “I voted.”

Justin Roebuck: I waited a long time for that license plate to become available. And my wife thinks I'm a total nerd.

Roebuck is calm and no nonsense. He seems like the kind of person who maybe never really raises his voice when he gets mad.

Like a lot of people in his county, he's very involved in his church. And he talks about how important it is that people in his community have faith in the election process.

Justin Roebuck: People have to trust the method that we use to choose our government, right? I mean, that is so fundamental to what we do and who we are as Americans. I mean, this is a beautiful process. I don't want to get lost in the challenges and not have an opportunity to reflect on the joy of this.

He grew up in Michigan. While he was in college he worked for the Michigan secretary of state and spent a lot of time with the secretary.

Justin Roebuck: And that really gave me a passion for the administrative side of the elections process and actually how it's run.

This self-described nerdy data guy was hooked. But he’s certainly got his work cut out for him these days. When you speak with voters around his county there's a lot of skepticism and confusion about pretty much every aspect of the voting process.

Things like: Are non-citizens voting? Are people voting more than once? And can the voting machines be trusted? Lots of people were eager to talk about these concerns with our producer.

People like Derek, who was in downtown Grand Haven in front of the shop where he's a manager. Derek, who’ll tell you he’s a Trump voter, is pretty convinced there was fraud in the 2020 election, including in Ottawa County – something he worries could happen again.

Derek: With all the thousands of people in Ottawa County especially that are on the voter rolls that are deceased or whatever the case might be that are supposedly still may have voted. I mean, that’s gotta be looked into.

Actually that has been looked into in Michigan. A lawsuit that alleged thousands of deceased voters remain on the state’s voter rolls was dismissed earlier this year. The judge noted in her ruling that federal data shows Michigan is actually “among the most active states in canceling the registrations of deceased individuals.”

Derek: I vote old fashioned, go in there, show my ID, and then go and vote and put it in the machine.

Alexandra Salomon: You feel like that’s the most secure way to do it?

Derek: I think so. I think that's the best way to do it. But I also think that you need to have people count every single vote, like real people. And not machines and not tamper with anything, you know?

And he wasn't the only one worried about the trustworthiness of the voting machines. So was Samuel Kochmann, who was outside the bakery down the street. Like a lot of people we spoke to, he’s just not sure the system is secure.

Samuel Kochmann: I know that they get the ATM machines right every single time so why can't they get my name and who I vote for right? We've really progressed with our technological abilities and with proper oversight, there should be absolutely no excuse or reason.

Alexandra Salomon: How did you feel about the results of our last election?

Samuel Kochmann: I don't know. I don't know.

Alexandra Salomon: There was a lot of auditing of the votes and they said they didn't find any instance of fraud anywhere.

Samuel Kochmann: Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but the thing about it is, it's just a little, a little deception here and there and a little deceit here and there and ‘Oh we can overturn this’ or ‘We can do this with the ballots.’ Even just a little compromise in the integrity here and there, allows for a whole avenue.

He also planned to vote in person.

Samuel Kochmann: Just because it's a real person, a real body and I feel more like it was a, it was a true vote.

And he got so excited talking about all this, that he pulled out his fiddle.

Samuel Kochmann: You pricked a blood vessel of patriotism in me. So I would like to play a song that Trump plays at the beginning of all of his rallies or at the end.

[VIOLIN PLAYING]

That’s the YMCA song by the Village People, by the way.

[SOUND OF CARS DRIVING ON STREET]

Down the street at the clerk’s office, there was a voter who'd come to pick up a mail-in ballot. But he hadn't decided if he'd actually use it or not, because he wasn't sure it wouldn’t be altered.

And another voter told us that he’s simply hoping that Jesus will take care of the fraud.

[MUSIC]

Roebuck’s heard it all. And he says some of the questions around the integrity of the election aren’t at all new. He first started hearing some of them in 2016, when Donald Trump won the state of Michigan.

The vote was close.

Justin Roebuck: The narrative of the election being stolen or the election itself being untrustworthy, we saw elements of this narrative cropping up in different ways from the left. So it doesn't belong necessarily to one political party, even though it's more skewed to one right now.

After Trump won the state in 2016, Michigan began to make some big changes to its election laws to make it easier for citizens to vote. In 2018, the people of Michigan passed an important ballot proposal in a referendum. It changed the state’s constitution to allow a citizen to register to vote any time with proof of residency, including on election day.

In the midterms, in 2022, nearly 60 percent of voters approved even more changes. Voters agreed to amend the state constitution again, this time to expand the availability of things like drop boxes and early voting. State lawmakers who now make up a Democratic majority, have passed even more laws since then making access to voting easier.

Justin Roebuck: We're expanding voter rights and voter access and access to the ballot, for example, through absentee voting. But the challenges with that have also come to fruition. You know, counting those ballots and processing them in a timely fashion, uh, the equipment that's needed, the staffing that's needed.

Roebuck acknowledges that all these changes make some people anxious. It’s why election officials need to get things right. But there was, of course an election in 2020, that made those “challenges” that Roebuck describes even greater.

ARCHIVAL Donald Trump: Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 1: President Trump has now filed four separate lawsuits in the state of Michigan alleging misconduct in the 2020 election.

ARCHIVAL Newscaster 2: Hundreds of GOP poll workers saying they witnessed or were told about illegal activity in Michigan's counting process.

ARCHIVAL Chris Schornack: Vacant addresses have burnt down lots and these, these people voted, the dead people voted that that's fraud.

Justin Roebuck: You know, at that point in December of 2020, it became very personal for me and for our team, because, you know, in one of the federal lawsuits that was filed here in the state of Michigan, there were affidavits filed in federal court that insinuated that we had a turnout in a couple of our communities that was well over 100 percent of voters.

Justin Roebuck: So, one community in particular was a 460 percent turnout. And then the other one was 120. I can, I can assure you, um, we had great turnout, but it was not that high. We had about a 70/75 percent turnout in the community that was alleged to be 460%. And it was incredibly frustrating to me, you know, I was angry because the reality is I knew it was a lie.

Justin Roebuck: I knew that it was a lie because the information on those results could only have come from my office. And as we did the canvas and certification of our election, where we open those poll books and we look at the ballot numbers cast and we look at the number of registered voters on the poll book, we fundamentally knew that was a lie.

Justin Roebuck: And I think that for me propelled me to speak out. I know there were not a lot of Republicans across the country speaking out at the moment that I was, but I felt that it was very important because of the fact that we knew that those who were opposing the process at that time were not telling the truth.

Peter Bergen: You were speaking one day at a Republican women's group, and I believe someone asked you who had won the race between Trump and Biden. Can you tell us what happened at that event?

Justin Roebuck: Yeah, it was just a kind of a question and answer period at the end of a presentation that I was giving about, actually, about election integrity and the processes that we're going through to ensure election integrity. And so it was a simple question. I mean, it was: who won the election in the state of Michigan? And I said, ‘Well, Joe Biden did.’ And the reaction in that room was sort of a gasp.

Justin Roebuck: And that was early on, probably early 2021. I think at that moment, I realized that we had, as election administrators, an uphill battle,in this community to ensure not just in my community, but in a lot of communities across the country that we were not backing down, and that we continue to tell the story as it is, factual and true, because, part of the telling the truth is also not smiling and nodding, in a conversation where people are insinuating something else. And I think part of my challenge and frustration with political leadership that we've had is the unwillingness to do and say the right thing, when it comes to this issue of election integrity. I think it's really important to be honest with our constituents, in terms of why certain narratives are false.

Peter Bergen: You don't seem like a guy who gets easily angry. I mean, talking to you now. I mean, you seem pretty low-key and just the facts, but, I mean, you're pissed off.

Justin Roebuck: Yeah, I mean, I think that's accurate. I think that probably both of those statements are pretty accurate.

Roebuck’s been holding his ground and defending the integrity of the process ever since. Sometimes it can seem like he’s the only one. But a Republican-controlled Senate oversight committee found no evidence of systematic fraud related to the 2020 presidential election in Michigan.

Still, the claims of fraud didn’t stop.

In Ottawa County, around the same time, a grassroots group tried to take control of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners. Election integrity is part of its platform.

The group is called Ottawa Impact and it’s led by a guy named Joe Moss.

ARCHIVAL Joe Moss: My name is Joe Moss. I come with a message from the people. You've heard it before. We want our freedom back.

ARCHIVAL Matt Fenske: I call him God because what he says, people follow.

On its website Ottawa Impact says it recognizes the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage. It also lists its policy stances — for example, it’s pro-life, pro-parental rights, and, quote, “Pro Election Integrity, one vote per legal citizen.”

One of the commissioners the group was trying to unseat is Roger Bergman.

Roger Bergman: I'm a county commissioner District 10, which is Northwest Ottawa County.

We caught up with Bergman — who's a Republican — outside the Jumpin’ Java coffee shop in downtown Grand Haven, where he's a regular.

Roger Bergman: I’ve been on the board since, uh, 2012, so 12 years.

Alexandra Salomon: How would you describe what Ottawa Impact is?

Roger Bergman: Well, they are far right, in many respects, they are, um, as close to white supremacists as you can get and not say they're white supremacists. They are Christian nationalists, and they've been very disruptive in our county.

We reached out to Ottawa Impact. They didn’t specifically dispute Bergman’s characterizations of them but they did share a statement that said, in part: “Ottawa Impact is made up of moms and dads and freedom-loving Americans who love our kids, God, and our country.”

Joe Moss, who helped organize Ottawa Impact, became involved in county politics during the COVID pandemic, when Bergman was the chair of the Ottawa County board of commissioners. Bergman says the state and county were enforcing mask mandates and health precautions including at a Christian school that Joe Moss’s kids went to.

Roger Bergman: And um, there was some COVID actually that was happening at the school. And so our health department, uh, mandated that they shut down, which they refused to do, so then our sheriff's department shut them down.

Roger Bergman: And so Joe became very upset by that and was able to get a lot of people to sign on to his thoughts concerning that. And they came to our meetings, by the hundreds and then the thousands and demanded that we circumvent the law.

Bergman says he and the board refused to do that. So at the next election for the county board, Ottawa Impact put up candidates to run against all but one sitting Republican board member.

Roger Bergman: People don't pay attention to primaries usually. And they didn't then. And so in the primary throughout the county, all my fellow commissioners lost except for me, I'm the only one that survived.

Roger Bergman: I won by a couple hundred votes and now the Republican party in Ottawa County has been taken over by Ottawa Impact.

Members of Ottawa Impact have all signed on to what they call the “Contract with Ottawa.” In the contract, these officials have pledged to support election integrity efforts.

Bergman says along with President Trump's lies about election fraud, some of these local political leaders affiliated with Ottawa Impact have also been sowing distrust in the election process. And he believes that many of these elected officials know there is no fraud, that it's simply a strategy to sow distrust for political gains.

Roger Bergman: They're playing a dangerous game — creating this distrust and I think that's what they're doing. They're building up to create this case that we don't trust the election, even though they've been proved wrong.

Roger Bergman: That's not good. That’s not healthy for a democracy or, that's when you start getting people that want somebody to take over. Somebody to be a king. Or a dictator.

Roger Bergman: So I'm a Christian and these folks profess to be Christians as well. And yet they're lying, which really bothers me. How can you lie and and then say that, you know, ‘I'm a Christian’? How can you lie when you know that it's going to create problems? How can you do that?

In July this year, one of the Ottawa Impact commissioners raised some concerns about who was on the voter rolls in her community. Bergman says she took her accusations to Roebuck.

Roger Bergman: One of our commissioners brought up the fact that she knew of neighbors who were, had people from their address that were supposed to be on the voter list, but really didn't live there anymore, and she knew of thousands of them. And then Justin Roebuck said to her ‘You know, those are felonies. You need to tell me who they are.’

Here's how some of that exchange went between Roebuck and the commissioner at that July board meeting.

ARCHIVAL Joe Moss: Commissioner Wenzel had some questions.

ARCHIVAL Kendra Wenzel: Over half of my neighbors have people in their homes that are voting that do not live in their homes. Is there anything being done in the clerk's office? It's literally thousands of names that we're going through. We're knocking doors. We're asking who lives there and it seems to be kind of a mess. It's not accurate. So is there anything being done to clean that up?

ARCHIVAL Justin Roebuck: So you're saying over half of your neighbors have individuals registered and who are voting? Yeah, I would absolutely encourage you to get me that information as quickly as possible particularly because we're so close to an election. We would need to report that to law enforcement right away.

ARCHIVAL Kendra Wenzel: We have pages and pages and pages of that. So I…

ARCHIVAL Justin Roebuck: Send them over. That's a felony offense and we would need to report that immediately to law enforcement.

He also explained to her that he’d actually supported legislation that’s now in place. It requires the county to remove anyone who’s deceased from the voter rolls.

ARCHIVAL Justin Roebuck: So we get the death records, right? We had 1,930 people die last year in Ottawa County. We see those immediately.

And he explained that by law he's required to flag those names for removal from the voter rolls when those death records come in.

ARCHIVAL Justin Roebuck: We're flagging it immediately upon receipt for removal.

This is the kind of thing Roebuck does often in his community. Patiently explaining how the election laws work.

Justin Roebuck: You know I think the vast majority of people, at least that I've spoken to in my community, are people that care a lot about the process, and they are people who have maybe heard stories or have gotten information from sources that they have trusted, that seems to indicate to them that there may be a problem with our election system. And when I have conversations with people like that, I think, first and foremost, I'm starting from a place of saying, ‘You and I want the same thing: we both care about the integrity of our process. We want this process to be fair.’ And then, you know, I'm asking for facts.

Commissioner Wenzel never brought Roebuck any facts or evidence of fraud. But now the story was out there.

Peter Bergen: One of my bugbears is when people say there was no widespread fraud in the last election. Widespread is kind of misleading. I mean, I think there were a handful of cases where fraud was found. Election fraud is actually a very unusual crime because it doesn't really benefit you, the person doing the fraud, it benefits somebody else.

Justin Roebuck: I always say to our folks when we're having these discussions, this is a very high risk, low reward process, right? For example, if I'm going to walk in and impersonate a voter in a precinct, the first thing I have to do is sign a legal document saying that I am this person, I have to know their date of birth and their address. And I have to really hope that this person hasn't already come in to vote or has not already been issued an absentee ballot, or has not already voted early.

Justin Roebuck: And then if I'm willing and able to take that risk, then I get issued a ballot. Michigan is a state where we are required to ask for your photo ID. So I also have to attest to the fact that, you know, if I'm not this voter, maybe I don't have a photo ID on me. So there's another legal document that has to be signed at that point before I'm issued a ballot.

Justin Roebuck: Just say all of that happened and I got issued a ballot and then I would, I would vote that ballot and commit a five year felony and walk out of the precinct. And very, very high likelihood that that would be discovered in the process. You know, we're asking that person committing that fraud to take a huge risk for one changed vote, potentially changed vote. And I just think it is for that reason alone, it is not a common thing. It's one of the rarest crimes. And it's not to say that crimes don't happen. When they do, we prosecute them.

Peter Bergen: How often does that happen?

Justin Roebuck: Pretty rarely, you know, we had a couple of instances in 2020, a total of four that came to our attention. The largest percentage of the very small amount of fraud that we do see revolves a lot of times around a family member casting an absentee ballot for someone within their household, or, for example, a parent whose child is at college, thinking that, ‘Oh, maybe, you know, this, this is the person or candidate my son or daughter wanted to vote for,’ and casting a ballot that way.

Peter Bergen: What about, what about illegal immigrants voting?

Justin Roebuck: This is one of the, one of the surest ways in the United States to get deported very quickly is to commit an election crime.

Peter Bergen: [LAUGHS] So it wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Justin Roebuck: Absolutely.

Peter Bergen: You can get deported immediately.

Justin Roebuck: That's absolutely right.

Peter Bergen: How about poll workers miscounting or disposing of ballots?

Justin Roebuck: Well, that's another issue that is remarkable to me because I think in every state in the country we have a bipartisan process at play. You know, in Michigan, we are required to have a Republican and Democrat at the table whenever any decision is made about an election process, which includes in the precinct as voters are voting, being issued ballots, ballots are being counted and sealed up, as well as when the certification is happening.

Peter Bergen: This enhanced scrutiny you've referred to is presumably, in part, a good thing, unless of course, you know, you're being forced to go down every rabbit hole of every conspiracy theorist… how do you sort of assess, like, is this a legitimate concern when somebody comes forward versus this is just somebody who's just gone down too many rabbit holes on the internet?

Justin Roebuck: Again, a lot of this comes back to the fact that people trust information that comes from sources that they trust. I believe that's human nature. I think we all are in that boat. And, you know, we want to be an entity that people trust. For us, that means transparent behavior. That means opening our doors and showing people our processes.

Justin Roebuck: One of the things that I'm constantly inviting people to do is to actually sign up to be an election worker themselves. If somebody has legitimate questions and they're concerned about how elections are administered, then you as an American citizen have an opportunity as a member of this community to be on the front lines of that and to actually be the person that's signing the certificate that seals ballots in the container or issuing a ballot to a voter and checking their name off of a poll book.

Justin Roebuck: And when someone goes through the rigorous training that's required and sees the multiple checks and balances in the process, the bipartisan nature of the work, sees the transparency, it gives them pause, I think, and gives them an ability to see things in a different light.

Roebuck's been doing a lot of that “inviting people into the process,” in all kinds of formats and in all sorts of places, like coffee shops.

ARCHIVAL Katie Bard: We are at our next coffee with the clerk at Affogato's Ice Cream and Coffee here in Allendale.

ARCHIVAL Joe Roebuck: Yes, this is an amazing place. We're here from 9:00 to 10:30 this morning. Any questions you have about what's going on in our office with elections.

On live talk radio.

ARCHIVAL Gary Stevens: If you have a question for Ottawa County Clerk and register of deeds, Justin Roebuck and we do have a call. Good morning. You're on the line with Justin. Good morning.

At town halls, and at the local libraries, where he's also been doing live demonstrations of how the voting machines actually work.

ARCHIVAL Justin Roebuck: Hi guys, Justin Roebuck, Ottawa County Clerk. We're here in beautiful Zeeland Township, Michigan.

And he’s invited the public to come test out the machines themselves. And then livestreams the tests on Facebook.

ARCHIVAL Justin Roebuck: The printer is going to print out a full and complete ballot with the markings that I've chosen on it. Uh, and the goal for our testing purposes is literally to go through a series of ballots and make sure that the device will mark every single candidate on the ballot.

Peter Bergen: Is one of the concerns that people have around the question of the machines that are doing the tabulation, you know, computerization, these kinds of things, you know, that are perhaps hard for people to get their heads around about the like, how does this actually all happen? Is that right now the focus of a lot of people's issues — the way that the votes are being counted?

Justin Roebuck: We've had much more interest in that over the past four years than we had ever had in the past 10 years that I've done this. I recognize my bias as being someone who's been in this field for a couple of decades and, and having had my hands involved in it for quite a while. I equate it a lot of times to when I take my car in for an oil change and I have no idea what's under that hood.

Justin Roebuck: And if I were taking my car in and they came back and said, you know, ‘There's an issue we found, it's going to be a $4,000 repair.’ I think at that point I would want to understand more. I would want to get under that hood myself and maybe say, ‘Well, let's ask some more questions. Let's get some more detail here.’ When 2020 happened and you had the leader of the free world saying there's something wrong under the hood, a lot of people started wondering what that was and wanted to know more about it.

Justin Roebuck: And I think demystifying some of the elements of it are really important.

Roebuck says he thinks there have been a lot of people who’ve changed their mind after seeing firsthand how the process works, including members of Ottawa Impact.

Justin Roebuck: And then I think there's another group of folks out there who I would say is probably a smaller minority, for sure, that they have really made up their mind about what they believe.

Peter Bergen: Seems like a theological belief, right?

Justin Roebuck: Exactly, I'm not a psychological scientist, but I think you know, once you've believed a set of facts or values, uh, for a certain period of time, I think it becomes harder and harder to reverse that.

[MUSIC]

Not everyone, of course, in Ottawa County is skeptical about the election process, but even some of those voters told us they still had concerns. About safety.

Amanda Prewitt and John Winningham were at Pigeon Creek Park in West Olive, where people go hiking and walk their dogs. Prewitt said she’s worried about violence.

Amanda Prewitt: I've changed to a mail in ballot just I'm a little nervous with Trump getting shot at and stuff, even though I'm not for Trump. Don't want anybody getting shot at. So it makes me a little nervous to go in and so I decided to do a mail-in ballot this year.

John Winningham: If I have any concern, it's voter intimidation at the polls, not, not the integrity of ballots being counted. You know, not necessarily people showing up with firearms and, you know, declaring, you know, ‘Vote for whoever.’

And these concerns about safety are something that Roebuck has also had to take on.

Justin Roebuck: It's this combination of really not, and I truly mean this, not worrying but also being cognizant of it. And, and the reality of the environment that we're in necessitates certain changes, whether that's changes personally, or changes to what we're doing here in our office and making sure that we're going through the right motions of training, you know, training our staff how to open mail, for example, is one of the changes that we've gone through where election offices across the country are being mailed suspicious packages and fentanyl is being sent through the mail to election offices. Things that we did not have to think about a few years ago, we are thinking about.

Justin Roebuck: Whether it's training our election workers as well and some de-escalation tactics and going through security measures a little bit more thoroughly than what maybe we previously have gone through in training. Those are unfortunate realities that we face, in the environment that we're in. So I think we can't take these things for granted and we can't not think about them.

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Roebuck is up for reelection this November. In lots of counties around the United States officials like Roebeck have faced tough races.

Justin Roebuck: I'm unopposed, which is remarkable on many levels, actually. But we're very thankful for that because I think it allows us to do our job. I can 100 percent now commit to doing the actual job of election administration rather than having to step out to be a candidate.

But he does sometimes have those days where he wonders if he's making any kind of real difference.

Justin Roebuck: I think on the days where it gets really tough, I most often think about my kids, and it's emotional. We are so fortunate to have, uh, the system that we have been given and many people have fought for it so hard.

Justin Roebuck: And obviously many, many folks have died for it and the fight is continuing. But I want my kids to grow up in a country that values the freedom of democracy.

Justin Roebuck: And I think there's a Ronald Reagan quote that is pretty famous, that says that ‘freedom is only one generation away from extinction,’ and that we have to fight for it. And ultimately I think that that quote has taken on new meaning for me in the wake of 2020. And in some of the things that we've dealt with and really recognizing the fact that we really, truly are one generation away.

Justin Roebuck: We have to keep fighting for this because it matters so much.

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If you want to learn some more about the issues we covered in this episode, we recommend Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue by Julian Zelizer and Karen Greenberg. It’s available on Audible.

CREDITS

In the Room with Peter Bergen is an Audible original produced by Audible studios and Fresh Produce Media.

This episode was produced by Alexandra Salomon with help from Nathan Ray.

Shawn Allee was our field producer.

Our executive producer is Alison Craiglow.

Katie McMurran is our technical director.

Our staff also includes Luke Cregan, Erik German, Holly DeMuth and Sandy Melara.

Our theme music is by Joel Pickard.

Our Executive Producers for Fresh Produce Media are Colin Moore and Jason Ross.