Voters in Kane and surrounding counties turned out to the polls on Election Day on Tuesday on pace with recent years, if not at slightly higher numbers than average, according to local election authorities.
There were a number of contests on the ballot Tuesday around the Fox Valley. Election stories can be found at aurorabeaconnews.com and will be running in the Thursday print edition of The Beacon-News.
Kane County had seen 19,130 votes cast on Election Day as of around 3:30 p.m., Kane County Clerk John Cunningham said over the phone Tuesday. In addition to 21,490 votes cast early at in-person polling locations and 17,810 ballots received so far by mail, the county has topped 58,000 votes and counting, according to the clerk’s office.
That means turnout for Kane County – which has 314,863 registered voters, according to Cunningham – was just under 19% as of Tuesday afternoon.
In the April 2023 consolidated election, 17.42% of the county’s more than 300,000 registered voters cast ballots, according to past reporting. Cunningham said the highest turnout rates they’ve seen in consolidated elections hovered around 24%.
“I don’t know if we’ll make that, but we’ll be coming close to that in this election,” Cunningham said. “We have three mayor’s races – one in St. Charles, one in Geneva, one in Aurora – that I think should be getting the votes up.”
In nearby DuPage County, Chief Deputy Clerk Adam Johnson said they had seen 32,828 votes cast on Tuesday as of around 2:45 p.m. That’s in addition to 42,556 early in-person votes and 32,195 mail-in ballots received to that point.
In total, turnout sat at about 17.4% of registered voters as of mid-afternoon Tuesday, according to Johnson. The total turnout in the spring consolidated election in 2023 was just over 20%, which was the highest turnout the county had seen in a spring election in recent memory, he said.
Trending close to numbers in 2023, Johnson said on a phone call Tuesday that they’re seeing “decent turnout pace, but still a pretty low baseline.”
Johnson said one notable uptick has been in early in-person voting, which was nearly double what it had been in 2023. The county had 25 early voting locations this year, according to Johnson, up from 20 in 2023 and more than double the number of locations in 2019.
“It does look like the in-person Election Day vote may be trending down from two years ago,” Johnson said. “Potentially, a lot of those people just went and voted … at one of the convenient early locations over the last, you know, couple weeks.”
Kendall County had seen 4,395 ballots cast on Election Day as of Tuesday afternoon, in addition to receiving just over 3,000 mail-in ballots and 2,173 voters who cast their ballots early in-person, according to numbers provided by Kendall County Clerk Debbie Gillette at around 2:45 p.m.
Will County was up to 27,852 votes on Election Day as of around 3:30 p.m., said Will County Clerk Annette Parker over the phone on Tuesday. Combined with early in-person votes and mail-in ballots, the county was up to 59,810 ballots cast – about 13% of its 453,563 registered voters.
Consolidated elections typically draw 16%-17% of voters in Will, Parker said on Tuesday, and she said she anticipates turnout for this election at that level or slightly higher. Parker previously told The Beacon-News that mail-in ballot numbers may be lower for this election than in 2023 because the office had to wait until the February primary results were certified before printing ballots and sending them to voters by mail – meaning that in Will County, for example, ballots weren’t sent out until March 17.
Early voting in-person opened in Kane County on March 7, and on March 17 in DuPage, Kendall and Will. Voters also had the option to cast their votes by mail – though ballots had to be postmarked by April 1, according to the local clerks’ offices.
Races on the ballot in local counties included a face-off between current Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin and challenger John Laesch, city council and school board races and a number of local referendums, including a 0.75% sales tax question being put to voters in Kane County.
And Cunningham emphasized that, though off-year elections don’t always attract the most attention, those local races are some of the most important for the general public.
“What they don’t realize is that these consolidated elections are your local elections that affect your tax bill more than anything,” Cunningham said Tuesday.
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com
