11/8/2022
The election on Tuesday will mark the end of a saga that saw several normal election deadlines and dates moved around because of delays in the 2020 Census caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. That in turn pushed back the state’s redistricting process and either compressed or elongated several election timelines.
On the state level, the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller, treasurer and an Illinois Supreme Court seat are up for grabs, to name a few. Across the country, 36 governor’s seats are on the ballot this year.
In the governor’s race, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker will face Republican candidate Darren Bailey and Libertarian Scott Schluter.
Seats in the Illinois General Assembly are up as well. One referendum on the state level, a constitutional amendment to codify the right for workers to unionize in Illinois, is also on the ballot.
As is the case every two years, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives is on the ballot, along with one-third of the U.S. Senate. For Illinois, 17 congressional seats and one Senate seat, currently held by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, are up in this year’s election.
Duckworth, a Democrat, will face Republican Kathy Salvi and Libertarian Bill Redpath.
To read about the candidates, go to the Northwest Herald’s Election Central at nwherald.com/election.
Despite this, and the many challenges that party officials said came along with it, early voting kicked off 40 days before election day on Sept. 29 with a strong turnout in its first day.
As of Monday afternoon, 26,353 voters cast ballots early, County Clerk Joe Tirio said. Nearly 17,600 of the 23,500 vote-by-mail ballots requested had been returned.
This compares with the 2018 midterm and gubernatorial race, where about 33,000 people voted early, but only 8,153 people voted by mail, Tirio said. That means 2022′s early total eclipsed 2018 by about nearly 2,800 votes as of 5 p.m. Monday.
Illinois has had 18 congressional seats in the past but had its total reduced by one after the decennial redistricting process that followed the 2020 Census. As a result, McHenry County now falls into four new congressional districts instead the previous two, and the McHenry County Board, in addition to redrawing its boundaries, made the decision to reduce its size from 24 members to 18.
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