ELECTION DAY 2022

November 8, 2022 | By CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS

Today is Election Day and this is a reminder to head to the polls.

If you haven’t voted, you can find your polling place here.

And Illinois offers same-day registration at your polling place or your county/election authority’s main vote center. A vote center is usually the office of the election authority, typically at the county courthouse, according to a spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Elections, where any voter can cast a ballot regardless of their precinct. ISBE noted that in Champaign, DuPage and the city of Chicago every polling place is a vote center.

Voters can look up their local election authorities here.

Voters wishing to register on the day of the election will need two pieces of ID, ISBE noted. They’ll need one to verify their identity, such as a driver’s license or a state ID, and one to verify their address, such as mail from a bank or from a government entity which shows their address.

If a voter received a vote-by-mail ballot but decides they would like to vote in-person instead, they may do so by taking the mail ballot to their polling place and surrendering it to local election officials.

If a voter has applied for a mail ballot but it hasn’t arrived, they may go to the polling place where an election judge can verify that it was sent but not returned. The voter may then sign an affidavit and be allowed to vote in person.

As of Monday, ISBE data showed 632,447 Illinoisans had voted early, while 873,486 mail-in ballots had been requested. Of those mail ballots, 544,016 had been returned as of Monday.

To be counted, ballots must be received by election authorities within 14 days of the election if postmarked on or before Election Day. Another 11,724 grace period ballots have been cast, according to ISBE.

Below, Peter Hancock has a recap of what the candidates for governor were up to on the final day before the elections.

As always, election night tallies are all unofficial. The final vote is scheduled to be certified by ISBE on Dec. 5.

Here’s another link to our voter’s guide for those still doing your research.

Candidates make final push to get out the vote

Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker was crisscrossing the state Monday while his Republican challenger, state Sen. Darren Bailey, focused on the Chicago suburbs as they both made their final pitches to voters ahead of today’s general election.

Pritzker, along with other Democrats at the top of the ticket, held get-out-the-vote rallies at union halls in five cities aiming to increase turnout among labor voters. That included pleas for passage of the so-called Workers Rights Amendment that would guarantee employees the right to engage in collective bargaining.

“To protect our fundamental freedoms, to lift up working families, we have to elect pro-labor, pro-choice, pro-voting rights, pro-civil rights Democrats up and down the ticket, right?” Pritzker called out to a cheering crowd in Springfield.

Bailey, meanwhile, spent Monday morning campaigning with GOP attorney general candidate Thomas DeVore, criticizing the Pritzker administration for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and lodging new accusations that Pritzker is secretly planning to impose vaccine mandates on school children.

Pritzker, however, said he had no plans to mandate any vaccine requirements, saying Bailey was “lying” in “a desperate attempt to win some votes.”

Peter Hancock covered the story Monday.