Peoria Standard

Secretary of State Jesse White raised some confusion among voters who had already requested to vote by mail when he issued a letter to voters encouraging them to do just that.

“We started getting calls from the letter that the Secretary of State had sent out,” Peoria County Election Commission Executive Director Thomas Bride told Central Illinois Proud. 

The letter was sent out Sept. 15 to voters who had not requested to vote by mail prior to the end of August. Any voters who requested a vote by mail ballot between the end of August and Sept. 15 were accounted for at the county Election Commission, but not at the time the letter was written. 

“People that have requested vote-by-mail after the data we sent in, there’s a lag period there," Bride said. "They’ve gotten a letter saying, ‘We’ve been notified by your local election authority that you haven’t requested your vote-by-mail ballot.’ We started getting calls by people saying, “Hey, I requested one, did you get it?”

Another letter to remind voters they can vote by mail will be sent out on Oct. 15. Anyone who has requested a vote by mail ballot began receiving them on Sept. 24, which is when early voting begins. 

“The legislation that was passed this summer to encourage vote-by-mail required us to send out a vote-by-mail application to anyone who had voted since 2018 and the first of August," Bride said. "Then, we had to send data to the State Board of Elections by the end of August who had requested out of that group so far."

The county Election Commission received a lot of phone calls due to the confusion the letter brought, but Bride said the commission receives phone call all the time, whether people are confused or just complaining. Many people just don't like receiving mail from the county Election Commission in general. 

“We always get that third group of calls that people were just upset about getting mail and not wanting anything to do with this,” Bride said. "But we get those no matter when mail goes out."

Voting by mail isn't new the the county or state. 

“We’ve been doing no-excuse vote by mail in Illinois for 10 years," he said. "This isn’t new to us. We had 6,500 in Peoria County that voted by mail the last presidential election. We had 10,000 votes in 2018. In 2016, about 20% of the country voted by mail. It may be new to a lot of our voters, but not new to us."