About 70% of the nearly 8.1 million registered voters in Illinois are expected to cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, and historically less than a third of them will have done so already through early voting or vote-by-mail options.
That means millions of Illinois voters will head to polling sites Tuesday, including scores located throughout the suburbs. Voters who don’t know where to cast ballots can visit their county clerk’s website or the Illinois State Board of Elections’ online polling place locator at ova.elections.il.gov/PollingPlaceLookup.aspx.
Polling sites are open on Election Day from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. They are required to stay open later if there are voters in line when the polls close or if technical issues prevented voting at any point on Election Day.
Multiple election judges staff each polling site. Each one has undergone at least four hours of state-mandated training.
“The clerk’s office also prepares and distributes a comprehensive election judge manual — more than 200 pages — to all judges with written instructions on all subjects covered in the training,” said Cook County clerk’s office spokeswoman Sally Daly.
Election judges do not have access to ballots once they are scanned, county election officials said.
“Once votes have been cast and stored in the scanner, there is no way to alter them,” said Adam Johnson, DuPage County’s chief deputy clerk.
An estimated third of all votes cast this year in Illinois will be from vote-by-mail or early voting like Jason Bondar of Buffalo Grove did last week.
Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com
Most voters will check in with an election judge and be handed a ballot after answering a few questions about their identity. Occasionally, voters may be asked for identification if a signature doesn’t match or the voter has been inactive, officials said.
Voters can request a provisional ballot if there’s an issue that arises at the polling place. They must return to their county clerk’s office within seven days to produce the proper paperwork required to cast ballots for their vote to be counted, though.
“If the circumstances dictate that ID is required, then an absolute refusal could leave you without a vote,” warned McHenry County Clerk Joseph Tirio.
Like in-person early voting, Election Day ballots are scanned and locked in a box, officials said. No votes are counted until the polls close on Election Day.
“Early votes and vote-by-mail ballots are scanned into the tabulators but are not counted until Election Day per state law,” said Lake County Clerk Anthony Vega. “At early voting locations, our judges have multiple checks to ensure that the number of ballots they issued correspond to the number of ballots that have been cast in the tabulators. For vote-by-mail, our office ensures that the number of ballots cast corresponds to the numbers of ballots returned. This is done on a daily basis.”
Most polling sites also are equipped with electronic voting options as well. While much has been made about the security and integrity of ballot management in recent years, election officials contend there is no difference in the safety of a paper ballot and an electronic ballot.
“There is no data connection between the election equipment, tabulation servers and the county network or the external internet,” Johnson said.
Once a voter casts a ballot, their status is changed in the county clerk’s database so they can’t go elsewhere and request another ballot, election officials noted.
In-person voters can see their votes counted when the tabulator accepts the ballot. Vote-by-mail voters can use various programs like Voter Power or BallotTrax to monitor the status of their ballot.
Mailed ballots are accepted daily at the clerk’s office and “accepted in the presence of a bipartisan team of election judges,” said Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham.
Concerns about noncitizen votes were largely debunked as well, election officials said.
“A Brennan Center for Justice analysis of the 2016 election indicated that only 0.0001% of 23.5 million votes were suspected noncitizen votes,” Vega said. “A Heritage Foundation study revealed 23 cases of noncitizen voting from 2003 to 2022.”
When results start appearing online after polls have closed, most suburban clerks are tabulating early votes first, followed by vote-by-mail and then Election Day ballots.
Anyone concerned about potential malfeasance at polling sites can contact county clerks, or call voting rights hotlines set up by the U.S. attorney’s office at (312) 469-6157 and (312) 469-6158 or the Illinois attorney general’s office at (866) 536-3496.
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