Of the 480,000 Lake County registered voters, nearly 170,000 requested vote by mail ballots for the November 3, 2020 General Election. The Lake County Clerk's office has already received 112,000 voted ballots back via mail and the postage-free drop boxes. This amount is four times higher than any election in Lake County’s history.
After the polls close on election night and all the voters in line by 7 PM have been served, Lake County’s election results, to include Election Day, Early Voting, and vote by mail ballots, will be posted online at LakeCountyClerk.info.
The Lake County Clerk, office staff, and the election judge teams have worked endless hours for the past month to check-in and verify all the mailed ballots, and many, but not all, of the vote by mail ballots will be included in the election night’s totals. Some vote by mail ballots still need to be verified by election judges before they can be cast. Both staff and judges will continue to process the remaining vote by mail ballots beginning November 4.
There will be two scheduled updates to the website totals:
- November 10 at 5 PM - to include additional vote by mail ballots processed to date
- November 17 at 5 PM - Final totals to include remaining vote by mail ballots and validated provisional ballots
It is important to understand that the official results for the General Election are not final on election night, but 14 days after Election Day per Illinois state statute. For this election, that date is November 17. This timing allows for still arriving mailed ballots postmarked by November 3 and the processing of provisional ballots. This is not a new legal order. The two-week provision has been a state statute for many years.