Strategy to ensure the security of YOUR vote:
1) As early as possible, complete the official County Clerk’s Application for a Vote-by-Mail ballot. (We do NOT recommend opting-in to the Permanent Vote-by-Mail list. That will ensure that a LIVE ballot will continue to be mailed to your address, even after you move or die!)
2) Follow up to make sure you receive your ballot – you have “claimed your name” – no one else can vote YOUR ballot.
3) Take that ballot with you to the polling location and vote as early as possible. While at the polling location, SURRENDER that VBM ballot, watch the Election Judge write “SPOILED” across the ballot and secure it in a “Spoiled Ballot Envelope”.
4) Vote a regular, live ballot which you can feed through the tabulator yourself to ensure that it has been tabulated. You have “secured your vote“!
5) If something unexpected happens and you cannot vote in person, you can still mark your ballot and you, a family member or a friend can drop it in a secure drop box before the polls close on Election Day.
6) Help family, friends and neighbors to get their ballots and vote. In Illinois, you can help to make sure those ballots are delivered to be tabulated. (*See notes below).
WHATEVER VOTING METHOD YOU CHOOSE, ALWAYS VOTE!!
EVERY VOTE MATTERS.
Ballot Gathering
aka “ballot harvesting”
*FROM BALLOTPEDIA:
Illinois law allows vote-by-mail ballots to be delivered in person by any person the voter authorizes or by a company licensed as a motor carrier of property by the state. In the case of voters who are physically incapacitated or hospitalized, an employee of the facility the voter is in may place the ballot in the mail.
Illinois law states the voter must do the following after sealing their absentee ballot in the return envelope:
| “ | The voter shall then endorse his certificate upon the back of the envelope and the envelope shall be mailed in person by such voter, postage prepaid, to the election authority issuing the ballot or, if more convenient, it may be delivered in person, by either the voter or by any person authorized by the voter, or by a company licensed as a motor carrier of property by the Illinois Commerce Commission under the Illinois Commercial Transportation Law, which is engaged in the business of making deliveries. It shall be unlawful for any person not the voter or a person authorized by the voter to take the ballot and ballot envelope of a voter for deposit into the mail unless the ballot has been issued pursuant to application by a physically incapacitated elector under Section 3-3 or a hospitalized voter under Section 19-13, in which case any employee or person under the direction of the facility in which the elector or voter is located may deposit the ballot and ballot envelope into the mail. If the voter authorized a person to deliver the ballot to the election authority, the voter and the person authorized to deliver the ballot shall complete the authorization printed on the exterior envelope supplied by an election authority for the return of the vote by mail ballot.[3] | ” |
Illinois law also contains a section for absentee voting by individuals who have been “admitted to a hospital, nursing home, or rehabilitation center due to an illness or physical injury not more than 14 days before an election.” Such voters may have anyone registered to vote in the same precinct as them or a legal relative to obtain and return their mail ballot.
The law states, “Upon receipt of the vote by mail ballot, the admitted voter shall mark the ballot in secret and subscribe to the certifications on the vote by mail ballot return envelope. After depositing the ballot in the return envelope and securely sealing the envelope, such voter shall give the envelope to the precinct voter or the relative who shall deliver it to the election authority in sufficient time for the ballot to be delivered by the election authority to the election authority’s central ballot counting location before 7 p.m. on election day.”