Illinois Mail-In Voting: How To Get A Ballot, Drop Box Locations

ILLINOIS — More than 500,000 mail-in ballots went uncounted during the 2020 primary season nationwide, many of them because they were deemed incomplete or because they arrived too late.

The issue could grow: A record number of voters are expected to stay away from traditional polling places for the Nov. 3 general election because of the coronavirus pandemic and instead cast their ballots by mail.

Vote By Mail Poll: IL Voters Nervous Ballots Won't Be Received

To help ensure your vote is among those tallied in Illinois, here's what you need to know:

• Voting by mail is available to all Illinois voters prior to Election Day. Voters can request a vote by mail ballot through the mail or in person.
• The first day to file an application to vote by mail was June 16. The last day is Oct. 29.
• Voters can file their application to vote by mail online, by sending it via mail to their county clerk's office or by dropping it off in person at the county clerk's office. The Illinois State Board of Elections also sent vote by mail applications and postage-paid return envelopes in July to any voter who has voted in any election since November 2018, and to anyone who has registered to vote or updated their voter registration since March 18, 2020.
• Vote by mail ballots will begin being mailed to voters starting on Sept. 24. Those who filed a vote by mail application online will receive an email notifying them when their ballot has been mailed. It may take four to five days to receive your ballot.

Once you get your ballot:

• Ballots will come with a return envelope and can be returned by mail.
• Those who have concerns about their ballots being shipped via the U.S. Postal Service can also drop off completed ballots at drop boxes in their voting jurisdiction. (Find a list below)
• Ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3, or they will not be counted. If a ballot envelope is placed in a mail drop box on or near Election Day, that envelope may be postmarked late and will not be eligible to be counted.

Where are the drop boxes? Here's the list so far:

• Suburban Cook County
• Chicago/Cook County
• DuPage County: Drop box at the parking lot and main entrance of the Jack T. Knuepfer Administration Building, 421 N County Farm Road in Wheaton, or any DuPage County early voting site and polling place. List of early voting sites and polling places here.
• Kane County: Drop boxes will be located inside the Kane County Clerk's Office in Geneva, the clerk's Aurora Satellite Office and Elgin City Hall.
• Kendall County
• Lake County
• McHenry County: McHenry County Administration Building, 667 Ware Road, Woodstock
• Will County

With guidelines changing in many states, more than 80 percent of all American voters will be eligible to receive a ballot in the mail for the 2020 election, by far the most in U.S. history.

That’s a result of 20 states loosening vote-by-mail laws this year due to the pandemic. As of Aug. 25, data from The Washington Post indicates 100 million people will be eligible to vote by mail either with no “excuse” or citing fears of the coronavirus as a reason. Among them, 51 million people will be automatically sent a ballot in the mail and 44 million people sent an application for a mail-in ballot.

Only six states still require a valid excuse other than coronavirus fears to vote absentee. Five states had already conducted elections solely by mail even before the pandemic.

But will your vote actually count?

In the primary election, a study by the Post showed 534,731 ballots were nixed in 23 states, and NPR found even more — 558,032 in 30 states — in a similar study. In New York City alone, more than 84,000 mail-in ballots were tossed and lawsuits were filed over the legitimacy of the outcomes of some close races.

Millions of people will cast their ballots by mail for the first time in the 2020 general election. Pew Research numbers show the number of people who vote by mail had already been on a sharp increase for years. In 2016, more than 20 percent of voters nationwide voted by mail, a total of about 27 million.

Of the 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, officials found just 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people, according to Electronic Registration Information Center data analyzed by the Post. That equates to a 0.0025 percent fraud rate. The Brennan Center for Justice has described vote-by-mail fraud as “infinitesimally small.”

Why are people concerned about a legitimate election with so few documented cases of actual fraud?

Partly, it’s problems with the U.S. Postal Service. But equally troublesome are problems that exposed themselves during the primaries. The Post data shows more ballots were rejected in 23 states than the number of absentee ballot rejections reported in the 2016 general election nationwide, in large part because of mistakes in filling out the ballots.

That means a lot more opportunities for inexperienced mail-in voters to make mistakes — which Daniel A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida, says could pose a significant problem in the rejection rate come November.

“Experience matters,” Smith told the Post. “If you lack experience voting by mail, the odds of you casting a ballot that doesn’t count will go up.”

To make sure your ballot is counted:

• Register to vote: In most states, you can do that online.
• Follow directions: "If it says fill in the oval, fill in the oval," Amber McReynolds of the National Vote at Home Institute told NPR.
• Send it back: Make sure to mail in your ballot well ahead of the deadline.

President Donald Trump, who voted by mail in the Florida primary and praised his home state’s absentee voting system, has often said — with no supporting data — that the upcoming election will be the “most rigged” in American history due to the amount of mail-in ballots expected to be cast.

Legal cases are ongoing involving the Trump administration and several states over mail-in voting.

Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said if the election between Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden is close, the mail-in ballots will create “a mess.”

“The two campaigns will be arguing over nonconforming ballots, which is going to run up against voters’ beliefs in fair play,” Stewart told the Post.

There’s also growing concern over the governmental entity tasked with handling the influx of mail-in ballots.

Under Trump, the Postal Service has come under fire for increasingly slow service, mail backlogs and planned changes that some have feared will have an effect on their ability to handle the expected massive increase of mail-in ballots this year.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told senators on Capitol Hill in recent testimony he was unaware of certain changes at the Postal Service until they caused a public uproar. But he also said there are no plans to restore mailboxes or high-speed sorting machines that have been removed. His testimony raised fresh questions about how the Postal Service will ensure timely delivery of ballots for the November election.

In some places such as Chicago, vote-by-mail drop boxes will be installed so voters can avoid the lines at the polls and not have to worry about Postal Service issues.

The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.