All across Lake County, voters will travel to the polls on Tuesday to choose mayors, village trustees, clerks, city councilors, aldermen, assessors, school board members and highway commissioners.
And, if history is any indication, many more people will not.
Lake County is by no means unique in that respect.
A study released last year by Portland (Ore.) State University found that fewer than 15 percent of eligible citizens across the United States turned out to vote for community leaders like mayors and city councilors. In cities like Las Vegas and Dallas, turnout was in the single digits. The median age of voters was 57, with residents 65 and older being 15 times more likely to have voted than those between 18 and 34.
Lake County Clerk Carla Wyckoff, who oversees local elections, said the most accurate year for comparing this year’s election is 2013, when a similar slate of positions were on the ballot. Archived records show that turnout that year was below 18 percent, with only about 72,800 ballots cast out of a possible total of nearly 410,400.
In February’s Democratic primary in Waukegan, turnout was just 9 percent. Any registered voter in the city could have cast a ballot in that election, not just registered Democrats. Even in November’s election, which featured perhaps the most controversial presidential election in recent memory, nearly 30 percent of Lake County voters stayed home.
“Local government often has more real-world impact on the everyday lives of citizens than other levels of government,” reads a recent report from the nonprofit Knight Foundation. “Police departments, libraries and schools all fall under local government jurisdiction, and for homeowners, local government significantly affects their cost of living through taxation. Even the White House says, ‘Most Americans have more daily contact with their state and local governments than with the federal government.'”
In perhaps the highest-profile race — for mayor of Waukegan, which is the county seat and largest city — both candidates said they were aggressively courting voters. If turnout is low, a surge of voters supporting either candidate could tip the scale to one side or the other.
“I’ve been personally walking every ward,” said Ald. Sam Cunningham, 1st, the Democratic candidate. “Going door to door, talking to voters and asking for their support. That’s part of my strategy.”
Ald. Lisa May, 7th, is Cunningham’s opponent and running as an independent. She said her team is knocking on doors, as well. And more than 30 people a night have been coming to her campaign headquarters to make phone calls on her behalf, she said.
“We’re just staying the course,” May said. “Making direct voter contact, all the way up to 7 o’clock Tuesday night.”
After a March 22 debate between the two candidates, high school senior Abby Crombie, one of the debate’s organizers, urged the crowd of at least 100 to try and reverse the trend of low voter turnout in Waukegan.
“We really need all of us to do our part to increase that voter participation,” she said that night.
And at recent town hall events held around the county by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Deerfield), the congressman pleaded with the crowds to channel the newfound political energy in the area resulting from the victory of President Donald Trump into local elections. He has urged people to vote on Tuesday.
“Voting is not just a right, it’s a responsibility,” Schneider said at a March 18 event in North Chicago.
Thousands of residents have already voted. As of Friday morning, 10,997 people across Lake County had taken part in early voting, and 3,685 early vote-by-mail ballots had been returned, according to Wyckoff.
“We could still get vote-by-mail ballots being returned,” Wyckoff said. “There’s still a few more outstanding.”
In 2013, there were 14,875 early votes and 6,498 returned vote-by-mail ballots, Wyckoff said. In 2015, the numbers were 8,475 and 5,347, respectively.
There will be four universal early voting sites open on Sunday and Monday, Wyckoff said, down from the 14 sites that have been open since early voting began. On Election Day, residents must vote at their assigned polling places.
Some people that voted early made use of electronic express voting machines, Wyckoff said. The machines were used by residents who voted early outside their “preferred area,” which is usually within the same cities or townships where the residents live. There are about 1,100 different ballot styles depending on where residents live, and it wouldn’t be practical to have all types of ballots on hand at all 14 early voting sites, Wyckoff said.
The express voting machines display screens on which voters choose their candidates, and then a traditional ballot is printed out based on their choices, Wyckoff said.
In some circumstances, the screens did not fit all candidates on one page, so voters had to click through to see all the competitors. But the machines warn voters multiple times that there are more candidates if they try to move on without clicking to the next page.
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“We’ve built in as many cautions and instructions as we can to make sure everyone gets a fair chance,” Wyckoff said.
Other notable races in the county include contests for City Council in North Chicago, where three challengers are looking to displace current aldermen. One incumbent, Kathy January, 7th, will not appear on the ballot after her opponent, Paula Carballido, successfully challenged her nomination papers. In another race, incumbent Torrance Markham, 5th, did not seek the Democratic nomination after he was charged in the fall with domestic violence-related crimes. His opponent, Kenneth Smith, is running on the Democratic line.
Voters will also make decisions on a slew of school board and township positions, and they’ll choose mayors and village presidents in communities like Antioch, Mundelein and Libertyville.
Twitter @lucashammill