(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- For the first time ever, Illinois voters can sign up to get vote-by-mail ballots for every election and many of them are.
The vote-by-mail application period is open and election officials around the region expect application numbers to soon pick up for that and permanent vote-by-mail ballots as election officials send out informational emails and snail mail about vote-by-mail.
Cook County, by far, out-paces other counties in the area. There were 4,000 people who had applied for mail-in ballots as of Thursday, according to deputy director for elections Edmund Michalowski.
Since emails have gone out to voters telling them about mail-in voting, a total of 18,875 voters have requested mail-in ballots with the number rising constantly, according to Cook County Clerk spokeswoman Sally Daly.
She said that 16,500 of those voters have requested to be sent vote-by-mail ballots permanently.
Michalowski expects many more. “We have an email blast going out over the next few days to 500,000 voters and then, June 1, we’ve got an additional 1.6 million piece mail to every voter that’s registered to vote in Cook County.”
Will County Clerk spokesman Chuck Pelkie said 7,987 people have requested that they permanently receive vote by mail ballots while 1,993 people have requested mail ballots for next month’s election only.
DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek said there have been about 3,000 requests for vote-by-mail ballots and about two-thirds have requested to be on the permanent mail-in vote list.
She said that of the 1,847 people requesting permanent mail-in ballots, 1,440 of them registered as Democrats while 407 are registered Republicans.
Kaczmarek said her office has been promoting vote-by-mail in news releases and on social media until now.
“In about a week, we’ll be sending out mailers to all 635,000 registered voters in DuPage with a permanent vote by mail application."
In north suburban Lake County, Clerk Robin O’Connor said there have been a little over 1,000 online requests and 258 paper requests for mail-in ballots. She said about 50 of those requesting paper ballots also requested to get mail-in ballots for future elections. She does not yet have the number of requests from people who put in online requests for ballots for the primary.
O’Connor said she sees the growing popularity of voting by mail and, as a result, plans to add another vote-by-mail drop box so that there will be five of them. That includes the current four at the county courthouses and the one that will be added at the county building.
“Every vote by mail box that we add, we have requirements. We like to have a camera on them, a 24-hour surveillance camera and we put them in very safe and secure places,” she said.
In Kane County, Clerk Jack Cunningham said 1,004 people have requested mail-in ballots for next month’s primary. More than 20 percent of them have asked for mail-in ballots in future elections.
Cunningham said that of those who’ve requested vote-by-mail ballots for this election so far, 765 are Democrats while 236 are Republicans.
McHenry County Clerk Joe Tirio said there have been 388 mail-in ballot applications filed for the upcoming primary. He said his county will open up the request for permanent mail-in voting in time for the general election in November.
Election officials stress that, despite what conspiracy theorists believe, vote-by-mail is safe.
“We dedicate a huge amount of resources to mail ballots to make certain that the integrity of the mail ballot is kept," Edmund Michalowski of the Cook County Clerk’s Office said.
“We went from 100-thousand to 500-thousand [in 2020] and we didn’t receive a single credible point where someone said that they mailed their ballot and it didn’t get processed.”
DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek echoes the sentiment that vote-by-mail is safe and secure.
“We have a very strict chain of custody of our vote by mail ballots in DuPage County and every vote is counted.”
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