It Could Be Weeks Until Illinois Knows Election Results

ILLINOIS — It's Election Day, and voters in Illinois will have their say on a range of issues — from who should be president to whether the state should allow a graduated income tax — but state election officials cautioned Monday that record-setting mail-in ballots could complicate the counting for weeks. That's not a bad thing, and it's not uncommon for unofficial vote totals to change in the weeks following an election, but because of the enormous number of outstanding mail-in ballots, the effect is likely to be more pronounced this year.

According to the State Board of Elections, local election authorities reported up to 587,000 mail-in ballots had yet to be returned as of Monday.

"While some of these ballots will arrive in time to be processed and included in election night reporting, many are likely to arrive after Election Day and be added to unofficial totals," officials said.

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State law allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within two weeks after the election. This year, that date is Nov. 17. Local election authorities must count all main-in and provisional ballots by that date, and they must transmit their results to the state by Nov. 24, one week later. Illinois will certify its election results on Dec. 4. Until then, all results are unofficial.

So far, about 1.76 million ballots have been cast by mail in this year's election, officials said. About 1.83 million votes have been cast early in person, for a total of nearly 3.6 million votes cast so far. Compared to 2016, the last presidential election year, that's a 375 percent increase in mail-in voting and a 20 percent increase in in-person early voting.

Voter turnout typically averages around 73 percent in Illinois, but has declined in recent years. If this year's voter turnout matches 2016's 71 percent, about 5.9 million votes are expected to be cast.

Here's a look at how voter turnout has changed over the years: