Long voting lines, blustery Chicago weather cap off raucous campaign

Illinois voters go to the polls Tuesday at the end of a raucous presidential-year campaign season, their ballots being cast in an election that will determine the future of a sharply divided nation for the next four years and, perhaps, beyond.

Pre-Election Day weekend and the eve of the election saw massive lines in parts of Chicago and the suburbs. On Tuesday, polling places in Illinois will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and prospective voters may find the Election Day weather an adequate reflection of the bluster of the campaigns from the White House to the county courthouse.

“Very windy yet mild and only sporadically showery weather is due Election Day,” iconic Chicago meteorologist Tom Skilling predicted. “It’s kind of fitting, isn‘t it, that strong winds are to buffet the area? Kind of fitting a tumultuous election would fall on a day with strong winds.”

With intermittent showers likely, “voters should have some rain gear ready as they head out to the polls,” Skilling said. Though wind gusts could top 45 mph, “it will be mild. Whereas normal highs this time of year are in the mid-50s, Tuesday should see mid to upper 60s — levels more typical of early October than early November,” he said.

It is a rare election year in Illinois, with no statewide candidates vying for office other than the contenders for president. All 17 of the state’s U.S. House seats are up for election as well as all 118 seats in the Illinois House. In the Illinois Senate, seats in 24 of the state’s 59 districts are on the ballot.

Additionally, there are several county offices at stake throughout the state as well as local judgeships. In Cook County, voters also will be deciding on a successor to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who opted not to seek a third term. And, in Chicago, voters also will cast their first-ever choices for 10 seats on the city’s Board of Education — an initial step toward a fully elected school board that will eventually have 21 members.

With Illinois’ history as a solidly blue state over the last eight presidential elections, covering 32 years, there were few visits to the state by Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, and Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In what ended up being a launchpad for her campaign, Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president in Chicago in August, after the party coalesced around her candidacy following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race in July.

Trump made two notable trips to Chicago as part of the truncated presidential battle with Harris. The Republican first participated in an interview

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Also on the presidential ballot is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ran as an independent before dropping his bid in favor of Trump.

Both Trump and Harris were focused on key swing states in their final pitches to voters. Harris focused on Pennsylvania, befitting its “Keystone State” nickname for a Democratic “Blue Wall” strategy seeking to win its 19 electoral votes as well as Wisconsin and Michigan. Harris made stops in Scranton, Allentown, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Trump held rallies in North Carolina, Reading and Pittsburgh and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In Illinois, state and local party organizations and candidates also conducted get-out-the-vote drives in an effort to increase turnout before the final day of voting.

A long line was reported Monday afternoon outside the Chicago Board of Elections’ voting Super Site at Clark and Lake streets, with one voter saying it took nearly two hours to cast a ballot. On Monday afternoon, numerous reports around Chicago detailed voters waiting hours to cast their ballots.

“The weather is rainy, but people are determined to come out and cast their vote,” Loop Super Site administrator Jacqueline Garmon said.

One voter came from an early voting site in Lincoln Park, saying she had been advised it would be quicker to vote downtown and return to the neighborhood rather than waiting in a line that was estimated to be up to three hours long.

Jessica Kirschner, 27, came with a friend to vote at the Super Site on a break from work downtown. Her friend wanted to leave after seeing the line, which ended up taking about 30 minutes, Kirschner said. But Kirschner was undeterred.

“There’s a lot of nerves, so I’m excited that I voted, and I did my part, but I won’t be able to relax until we see the results,” she said.

Around 12:30 p.m., employees from The Good Eating Company nearby on Wacker Drive offered trays of coffee and tea to people waiting in line down Lake Street.

“They’re doing their duty,” Marissa Tunon, one of the shop’s employees, said of the voters waiting in the drab weather conditions.

Statewide, as of noon Monday, more than 2.38 million voters had cast their ballots during the state’s early voting period. As of noon Monday, 1.55 million had voted in-person and another 832,898 by mail, according to the State Board of Elections.

The number of early voters and vote-by-mail ballots cast in Illinois was already almost a half million greater than the nearly 1.9 million cast in the 2016 presidential election. The high level of early voting and mail-in voting for 2020 — more than 4 million ballots in total — is considered an outlier due to restrictions and cautions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This also was the first year that voters were given the option to permanently receive a mail-in ballot and local election authorities in August notified every registered voter by mail of the option.

Overall, there were more than 8.1 million registered voters in Illinois as of noon Monday, a number expected to increase by up to 150,000 by the time polls close Tuesday due to same-day registration and voting on Election Day.

In Chicago, local election officials said, despite the weather, they expected the city to meet its typical voter turnout of more than 70% in presidential election years.

“Rain for the last three days certainly doesn’t help voters feel like getting out there or possibly waiting in line,” acknowledged Max Bever, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

More than 450,000 ballots were received back as of Sunday night, Bever said, out of over 1.5 million registered voters in the city. Typically, about half of voters submit their ballots before Election Day, with the day before the election seeing the most early voting, he said.

By Sunday, the number of early votes and mail-in votes that had been cast eclipsed the total number of those votes cast in the 2016 election, city election officials said.

As usual, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago will staff an election hotline at 312-469-6157 and 312-469-6158 to field complaints. The FBI’s Chicago field office also will have staff to address allegations of election fraud or other election-related complaints at 312-421-6700.

baiduhai’s Peter Breen contributed.