Bloomington Election Commission

UPDATED 5:10 P.M. | Mail-in and provisional ballots have flipped the results in a closely contested McLean County Board race.

UPDATED 1:45 P.M. | It will be two weeks before the community knows the outcome of a contested McLean County Board race.

McLean County and City of Bloomington election officials said Monday they have received more than 42,457 ballots through early voting and vote by mail. That is about 37.7% of the roughly 112,600 registered voters in the county, even before polls open Tuesday morning. Just 10 days ago, the votes cast figure was closer to 20%.

The parking lot outside the northwest entrance to Eastland Mall was so busy Friday that it resembled a classic Black Friday crowd. But instead of shoppers, they were voters.

One in five registered voters in McLean County has already cast their ballot, and a local election official says it’s possible overall turnout will top 80%.

The Bloomington Election Commission plans to begin mailing supplemental mail-in ballots starting next Monday to about 9,000 voters whose initial ballots mistakenly omitted two judicial retention questions.

The Bloomington Election Commission is seeking an emergency court order to allow it to mail 9,000 supplemental ballots to voters who received ballots in which two judicial retention questions were mistakenly omitted.

Early voting in Bloomington will resume Monday after being paused because of a mistake on the ballot.

The Bloomington Election Commission says it will seek a judge’s approval of its plan to fix a ballot error that has temporarily halted early voting in the city.

UPDATED 6:55 p.m. | The Bloomington Election Commission said Thursday it has suspended early voting after learning of a "glitch" with its ballots.

The Bloomington City Council gave the official OK Monday night for Grossinger Motors Arena to be used as a “universal” voting site for McLean County residents on Election Day on Nov. 3.

Bloomington could have an additional place where any registered voter from McLean County can vote on Election Day, if the city and county agree.

Election authorities in McLean County are mailing out tens of thousands of vote-by-mail applications to registered voters this week in advance of the Nov. 3 election.

Undecided voters are keeping early voter participation lower than election officials in McLean County had hoped.

Ten candidates have filed to run for city council seats in Bloomington and Normal as of Monday afternoon.

McLean County has already seen twice the number of early voters for Tuesday’s election than during the last midterm election—with the busiest final days still coming up this weekend.

The question of what office should oversee local elections divided candidates Tuesday at GLT’s McLean County Board forum for Districts 2, 8, and 9.

Nearly 1,700 McLean County voters have already cast their ballots for the midterm election—a heavy turnout for early voting with three weeks to go before Election Day.

In the race for McLean County clerk, incumbent Republican Kathy Michael and her Democratic challenger Nikita Richards have often been at odds.

Early voting for the midterm election starts Thursday. Voters in McLean County can head to the polls beginning at 8:30 a.m.

Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to dissolve the Bloomington Election Commission after a judge decided Thursday that Republicans and Libertarians had collected enough signatures for it to make the ballot.

Opponents of a referendum asking to dissolve the Bloomington Election Commission made it nearly halfway to their goal Monday as they argued that hundreds of signatures collected to put it on November’s ballot were invalid.

The fight over whether the Bloomington Election Commission should be dissolved turned a bit more cordial Friday as those on opposite sides of the issue agreed in court to quickly swap evidence in hopes of meeting a fast-approaching deadline.

The clock is ticking to resolve a dispute over the signatures collected to put a referendum on November’s ballot to dissolve the Bloomington Election Commission.

The chair of the McLean County Democrats said Monday that his party plans to file a formal challenge to the signatures collected to put a referendum on November’s ballot to dissolve the Bloomington Election Commission.

McLean County Republican and Libertarian parties jointly filed an estimated 1,300 signatures Monday in support of a referendum to dissolve the Bloomington Election Commission.

At least 1,000 valid signatures are needed for Bloomington election ballots to include the referendum. It would read, “Shall the city election law be rejected?”

McLean County voters outside Bloomington won't have a say in whether the county’s and city’s election offices should merge.