Every four years, Kalamazoo elects a County Clerk and Register of Deeds. The longtime incumbent says he runs things smoothly, but the challenger says he could do better.
For Republican Tim Snow this November marks an anniversary: 20 years since he first got elected to the office of Clerk-Register.
“I’m running again because the County Clerk and Register of Deeds office needs a professional clerk to really, really take care of all the issues that come up,” Snow says.
But Democrat John Taylor hopes that next January, he’ll become Kalamazoo’s Clerk-Register. While Taylor would be new to that office, he’s a veteran of the Kalamazoo County Board, first elected in 2002. He’s chaired the county board since 2015.
“I believe I have a track record at the County Commission of fiscal responsibility, while also listening to other people’s points of view. I was elected chair of the commission unanimously by both Republicans and Democrats,” Taylor says.
Clerk-Registers devote much of their time to managing the county’s people and property records. They also play a central role in local elections.
But Taylor says Snow’s office has not always run elections as well as it could have. He mentions an incident he says took place in 2012 where county commission candidates Julie Rogers and Mike Seals had their names swapped in one precinct. Taylor says Rogers was in a close race.
“Julie had spent a lot of time talking to voters in that precinct and then they received their absentee ballot only to see that the names had been switched around. We had to resend ballots out that year,” Taylor says.
Snow says he can’t find a record of such a mix-up but says it’s possible it happened. Julie Rogers says that yes, her name was left off absentee ballots in 2012 in Kalamazoo Township Precinct Nine.
“Tim Snow should be well aware of it,” Rogers says.
Snow says that some of Taylor’s other criticisms are simply off the mark. One concerns a very close state senate race between Republican Margaret O’Brien and Democrat Sean McCann in 2014.
“There was a recount where there were thousands of ballots missing. That affects – and when people go to vote they want to make sure their voice is heard and their voice is counted,” Taylor says.
Snow is emphatic that those ballots were not literally missing. But he says it’s true that some ballots could not be recounted. Either the seals on the bags broke, or the recount tally of ballots didn’t match the first one.
But Snow says state election officials were, in fact, impressed with the number of ballots that could be recounted.
“We are shown in trainings throughout the state as the example of how a recount is supposed to be done, which, I’m very proud of that, actually,” he says.
Taylor has also said that Kalamazoo County voters got their absentee ballots much later than in other counties.
“In Kalamazoo County we didn’t receive our ballots until October 6th at the earliest in some precincts. And I think people in the county expect their elected officials to be held to state guidelines and state standards,” he says.
Cities and townships mail absentee ballots, not the county clerk. And it’s not clear that Kalamazoo County’s governments lagged behind other places.
Battle Creek didn’t mail its first absentee ballots to residents until October 4. St. Joseph says it sent them on October 7, the same day as the City of Kalamazoo. Grand Rapids did get its ballots out a bit earlier; it mailed the first batch September 28.
The state does not have a hard rule on when absentee ballots for Michigan residents must be mailed.
For the wider duties of the Clerk-Register’s office, both Snow and Taylor say they’re committed to transparency. Snow says for him that means easy access to public records.
“We’ve done a tremendous job of putting things out for the public. We were the very first office in the county to start scanning documents and putting them online. Back in 1999 we started doing this,” he says.
Taylor says for him transparency means that if a problem that affects the public happens in his office, people will know.
“If there’s delays in absentee voting, absentee ballots being sent out you need to inform the media, you need to inform the public of why this delay is taking place and when it’s going to get solved,” he says.
In March the county board voted to put the county’s top administrator on leave but declined to confirm it publicly until two days later. Asked about how the county handled putting the administrator on leave, Taylor, who chairs the board, says he doesn’t remember all the details.
But, he says, “the transparency was there.”
Snow and Taylor agree on at least one major point on voting. Both candidates for Clerk-Register want to make absentee voting easier – by abolishing the rule that limits the reasons that voters under 60 can vote absentee.
Taylor and Snow also both support plans to update Kalamazoo’s election equipment in the near future.
