As vote-by-mail application numbers keep climbing in northern Illinois, so do the questions about how secure it is for voters to do that instead of voting in person.
Kendall County Clerk Debbie Gillette said her office had received 9,600 vote-by-mail applications as of the morning of Aug. 18 – and more have come in since. She said the office started collecting applications June 18 and has been receiving a couple hundred applications a day.
“It just keeps going up by the minute, basically, as we put them in,” Gillette said.
Gillette said 2,400 absentee ballots were cast during the 2016 general election and 3,068 were cast for the 2018 general election. That means that within the first two months of applications being accepted this year, vote-by-mail application numbers have gone up by 300% and 220%, respectively.
Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich said state election officials are encouraging voters concerned about COVID-19 to vote by mail. He said the board is expecting higher vote-by-mail numbers for this year’s general election as a result.
“We’re going to see record vote-by-mail numbers without question,” Dietrich said. “We’re already seeing that with people requesting those ballots.”
The record-breaking numbers follow a June 16 move by Gov. JB Pritzker to sign into law Senate Bill 1863 and House Bill 2238, which require vote-by-mail applications to be sent to all recent voters in Illinois because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under the new laws, local election offices must send vote-by-mail ballot applications and timeline information to voters who cast a ballot in the 2018 general election, the 2019 consolidated election or the 2020 general primary election, including voters who registered or changed addresses after the primary election, according to a news release.
Vote-by-mail ballots will be sent to voters who requested them starting Sept. 24. County clerks’ offices must receive the applications by Oct. 29 in order for voters to receive a vote-by-mail ballot in time for the Nov. 3 election.
Before 2010, Illinois voters needed a valid reason to vote via absentee ballot instead of voting in person, Dietrich said. He said that has changed with the advent of early voting within the state, and the state has had the option to vote by mail since 2016.
“For the last several elections, there really hasn’t been any difference between absentee and vote by mail,” Dietrich said.
Carroll County Clerk Brian Woessner said his county has had about 1,200 applications come in as of Aug. 17, compared with about 400 during the last presidential election. He said the absentee process will be the same as in past years.
“People need to know that it is safe,” Woessner said. “The only difference than going to the polls is that someone else is putting your ballot in the machine.”
McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio said the county had received 25,629 vote-by-mail applications for the November election as of Aug. 20. That number represents an immense increase over the 2018 election, when the county had 8,153 residents cast mail-in ballots, and the 2016 election, when there were about 2,300, he said.
Tirio said the county’s vote-by-mail application count Aug. 18 was about 16,000, meaning the clerk’s office received about 10,000 applications in a period of only two days.
“Other jurisdictions tell us that … you’ll get half of [vote-by-mail applications] in the last week,” Tirio said. “So imagine 32,000 as opposed to when we had previously a big year would be 8,600.”
Tirio said the county plans to offer only one ballot drop box location because he does not think offering more drop boxes in early voting locations – as neighboring counties such as Lake County have done – would meet his security standards. Adding more collection sites also would require a good deal of financial and human resources and is not necessary to ensure voter accessibility, he said in a news release.
However, Tirio said he wants to assure voters that voting by mail is a secure and trustworthy alternative to in-person voting.
Not only is her office watching out for duplicate completed vote-by-mail applications that are sent in, Gillette said, but each vote-by-mail ballot has its own barcode to ensure only one ballot is assigned to each voter. She said each signature on a vote-by-mail ballot will be checked by three election judges.
Gillette said the vote-by-mail ballot has to be postmarked by Election Day, and her office has to wait two weeks for everything to clear the mail. She said voters also have the option to drop their ballot in the drop box outside of the county office building or drop it off at the clerk’s office, but it cannot be dropped off at a precinct on Election Day, according to an opinion the attorney general issued within the past few years.
Andrew Werbrock, an attorney specializing in political law and a partner at Olson Remcho LLP in California, said some states – Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington – conduct elections primarily by mail and have not run into issues. He pointed to a review from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which found that in multiple instances there has been a 0.0006% rate of voter fraud either in person or by absentee ballot.
“You’re more likely to be struck by lightning or win the Mega Millions than be subject to vote-by-mail fraud,” Werbrock said. “It just doesn’t happen.”
Never mind that anyone who tries is subject to felony prosecution, Werbrock said.
“It just doesn’t make much sense,” Werbrock said.
Werbrock said multiple levels of safeguards are in place to make sure ballots that are counted are valid. That includes each absentee ballot being barcoded and subject to a signature verification process, and those ballot signatures can be checked as many as four times before they’re counted, he said.
If there’s any question about whether a voter is registered, Werbrock said, they might be given a provisional ballot, which usually is a different color than the typical ballot so they can be separated easily. If that person is in fact eligible to vote, he said, the ballot will count; it won’t count if they’re not eligible.
Werbrock said the demonstrated slowdown in mail is concerning ahead of the general election. Although many counties often will have drop-off locations for mail-in ballots, as well, he said, it makes it that much more important for people wanting to actually mail in their ballots to do so earlier rather than later to make sure they make it to election officials in time.
Wendy Connell of the Aurora Area League of Women Voters said increases in mailed-in ballots might pose some volume issues for the U.S. Postal Service, and the league takes a special interest in possible voter suppression issues. Even if this were a normal situation – recent USPS concerns aside – the general rule of thumb is that absentee voting, or voting by mail, is extremely safe and secure, she said.
Amid the pandemic, Connell said, the Illinois vote-by-mail expansion enables people to vote if they are afraid to go out in public, have a legitimate underlying health concern to not risk spending time in line at the polls or if they end up having to quarantine because of illness or exposure.
“That really lessens the time that you have to be in a public building,” even if voters just drop off their mail-in ballot at the county clerk’s office as opposed to mailing them, Connell said.
Although her office hasn’t discussed any potential mail volume concerns with postal officials, Gillette said she has had really good communication with the regional USPS official for Kendall County regardless and feels confident the post office is doing its best to make sure everything is good to go locally. She said she recently sent an email with photos of what the envelopes for the ballots will look like, including those being sent to voters and the response envelopes.
“So they know what to look for to process those,” Gillette said.
One thing Gillette wanted the public to be aware of is the clerk’s office is required to send applications to vote by mail according to a state statute recently signed by Pritzker. Voters are not required to vote by mail, and they still have the option to vote in person for early voting or on Election Day, she said.
Gillette said her staff has been caught in the middle of the state and callers who are upset about receiving the applications in the mail.
“We’re just following mandates and laws that they told us that we have to do,” Gillette said.
Connell said that if people are unsure about what’s going to be on their ballot or whether they are registered to vote, they can visit illinoisvoterguide.org. Illinois residents can register to vote, apply for their vote-by-mail ballot and find a sample ballot ahead of the election on the League of Women Voters-run site.
“Your right to vote is one of your unique rights as a U.S. citizen, and everyone should feel empowered to vote,” Connell said.
• Shaw Media Illinois news reporters Rachel Rodgers and Kelli Duncan contributed to this story.
Source: The Daily Chronicle
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