An election for the record books

Illinois voters set records for early voting as over 43% of the state’s 8.3 million registered voters had cast a ballot in the general election prior to Election Day.
As of mid-day Monday, the Illinois State Board of Elections [ISBE] reported more than 3.5 million ballots had been cast in the general election, far more than in any previous Illinois election. The advanced votes include over 1.75 million mail-in ballots as well as more than 1.78 million votes at early polling places and nearly 47,000 grace period votes.
There were also 586,709 mail-in ballots that had not yet been returned.
Under Illinois law, mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day will be counted as long as they are received by local election authorities within 14 days after the election. The deadline this year is Nov. 17.
In Will County 26,662 of the 123,837 requested mail-in ballots were still out as of Monday and of the 8,022 requested in Grundy County 1,388 had yet to be turned in.
According to ISBE data, 37.6% of Grundy County’s registered voters had cast a ballot as of Monday morning. The advanced vote total was at 13,725—6,634 mail-in ballots, 6,901 early votes and 190 grace period votes.
As of Monday, 44% of Will County’s registered voters had casting a ballot. Among the 203,964 ballots, 97,175 were mail-in ballots, 104,335 were cast at one of the county’s 24 early voting locations including 1,600 at Braidwood City Hall and 2,454 were grace period votes.
Election officials and voters in both counties were reporting lines at early voting locations for much of the past week as voters sought to get their votes in prior to the polls opening on Tuesday.
Local results from Tuesday’s general election were not printed in this week’s edition due to a press deadline.
While the polls closed at 7 p.m. results were unavailable in time for us to include them in this edition. However, unofficial election results will be available on our website at www.freepressnewspapers.com, and election reports posted in the Nov. 11 edition.
Election results are not official until after the re-tab and canvas that will including any remaining vote by mail ballots received and postmarked by Nov. 3 and valid provisional ballots cast on Election Day.
In Will County, the unofficial totals can be viewed at thewillcountyclerk.com that began rolling out the totals after the polls closed at 7 p.m. Early and mail-in votes were the first to be uploaded by the Will County Clerk’s Office and once all 305 precincts had reported in the grace period votes were included in the total.
In Grundy County, the early and mail-in votes were added in at the close of the night once all of the county’s 40 precincts had reported in to the county courthouse. The unofficial votes can be obtained at www.grundyco.org.
The final results will be posted by both counties following the re-tab and canvas set for Nov. 17 in Will County and Nov. 18 in Grundy County.
Peter Hancock of Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report