More voters than ever before in Peoria and Tazewell counties are choosing to cast their ballots before Election Day, leading to some long lines at polling locations.
“The first day we had a pretty good wait when we opened,” said Peoria County Election Commission Executive Director Thomas Bride. “When people come in, there's always a little bit of a line, but most of the time people come in and work through the line pretty quickly.”
According to Bride, early voting for next month’s general election is up dramatically with nearly 8,000 ballots cast as of Friday night. He said that’s an increase of 340% over the same point in the 2016 election cycle.
“Typically, we see the bulk of the early voting much later in the process,” Bride said. “Now, that may not necessarily be the case in this election.”
In Tazewell County, nearly 7,200 early ballots already have been submitted, including more than 4,100 over the past weekend at five early voting locations. County Clerk John Ackerman said wait times have reached 90 minutes or longer.
“We have had some occasional long lines reported at all of our facilities, mainly because everybody approaching all at the same time,” said Ackerman. “Times that normally would have been slow have been the key moments when people have turned out.”
Ackerman said the county already has shattered its record for early voting, easily surpassing the 4,718 ballots submitted prior to Election Day in 2016. He now expects the county’s vote total to eclipse his original expectation of 75,000.
“That might have been too conservative. We might approach 80,000 people voting in county, which would be fantastic,” he said, noting that would represent 87% voter turnout. “Normally we see a peak on the first day, and then it dies down. We haven't seen it die down; it's been pretty consistent. This is definitely an election unlike any other.”
Vote-by-mail participation also is on record pace in both counties.
Bride said 33,000 mail-in ballots were sent out in Peoria County and more than 20,000 have been returned.
“Right now, we're almost 60% of the balance that we sent out have been returned,” said Bride. “We've never received more than 10,000 before, so we're up dramatically at this point.”
Ackerman said his office sent out 22,600 vote-by-mail ballots, but could only estimate how many have been submitted so far.
“That's harder for us to know because, I'll be honest, we're not really counting as they come back,” he said. “We're busy opening them up, processing them, and tabulating them. As of today, about 4,000 have been tabulated, but I think if you count what's setting waiting to be tabulated, we've got about 7,000.”
Ackerman said he thinks enthusiasm for both presidential candidates is driving the record turnout, particularly among first-time voters.
“We had a gentleman in his 70s the other day come into the office to vote for the first time,” he said. “So it's not all young first-time voters.”
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