CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The head of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners said Monday that interest seems high ahead of an unusual mayoral election.
Early voting numbers are up, suggesting there is a lot of interest in the mayoral contest, in which 14 hopefuls are on the ballot Tuesday.
It it’s really tight, officials may not know the real winner or winners until March.With some 38,000 mail-in ballots still unaccounted for, and able to be postmarked as late as Tuesday, all the votes won't be counted by Tuesday night.The commission will be counting mailed ballots until Match 12, and the election will be certified on March 13, Chicago Elections Board Chair Marisel Hernandez said.If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote -- almost a certainty --the runoff would be April 2.
Hernandez said this is only the fourth open election for Chicago mayor in the past 100 years, with the most mayoral candidates ever.