Most Chicago voters will be casting their ballots in new polling places on Election Day

A little more than one month before Election Day, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners said Wednesday that most Chicago voters who head to the polls on Nov. 8 will be casting their ballots at a different polling place from where they were assigned to vote in the primary and in previous years.

Following a controversial decision to significantly streamline the number of precincts in Chicago between the primary and the midterms, election officials said Chicago will have 945 polling places for the November election, down from the 1,043 that were in place for the June 28 primary.

The sweeping changes are likely to cause some confusion on Election Day as voters who have cast their ballots before at the same church, school gymnasium or park district may suddenly find their assigned polling location is different.

As a result, election officials said they are launching a marketing campaign over the next 30 days encouraging registered voters to find out before Election Day whether their polling location has changed. The effort will include outreach in the media, investing in digital advertising and sending out memos to 1.5 million registered voters in Chicago focused on the question, “has your polling place changed,” said Max Bever, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections.

Bever also encouraged voters to check their new ward, precinct and polling place assignment ahead of time at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners’ website.

“This is the crunch time to tell people that they will likely find themselves within a new ward or district or precinct. So we are expecting the majority of voters will find themselves with a new polling place,” Bever said. “Former polling places that served last election cycle on June 28 will have signage directing people to their new polling place.”

The board eliminated 166 polling sites and added 68 new ones. And while the majority of polling sites that have been used in the past will still be used for the November election, the rejiggering of the precinct boundaries means most voters will be assigned to a new locale.

The reduction of the polling sites only affects locations on Election Day. Registered city voters will still be able to vote at the more than 50 early voting sites, including the voting “supersite” at 191 N. Clark St. through Election Day.

The move comes after the board implemented an updated electoral map that cut the number of voting precincts by nearly 40%. While the boundaries needed to be redrawn after the 2020 census, the precinct consolidation was nearly twice as drastic as the consolidation that occurred after the 2010 census.

Election officials have said the new electoral map should address rising costs of election operations, election judge shortages and the changing behavior of voters who are increasingly voting early or mailing in their ballots. Officials also have estimated that the cuts could save as much as $2 million because the board will have fewer supply costs and won’t need to hire as many judges to work the polls on Election Day.

When the cuts were initially unveiled this summer, the announcement resulted in some criticism from voting-rights activists worried that fewer polling sites will limit voter accessibility. Now that the list of polling places is finalized, some on Wednesday said they were disappointed the board reduced the number of polling places more than it had estimated it would.

Chicago mayoral candidate and businessman Willie Wilson raised concerns about voter disenfranchisement and filed a lawsuit to try to stop the new map from being implemented.

“If one person goes to the poll and can’t find their polling place, it’s wrong,” Wilson said Wednesday, emphasizing that he had not received his new polling place information yet. He said he plans to push forward with the lawsuit.

Still, Bever said the streamlining will result in every precinct being assigned a polling place in their neighborhood. In the June primary, voters in 73 precincts were unable to vote at a polling site in their neighborhood and instead had to cast their ballots at early election sites. Bever also noted some of the new polling places are condominium buildings, nursing homes and senior housing, spots that during the COVID-19 pandemic were not used.

“We are getting more buildings that traditionally served as polling places coming back to serve as polling places again, now that we’re coming out of the pandemic,” Bever said. “So that’s nice to see, especially when they can serve with a senior housing community so residents don’t have to travel very far.”

Another goal of streamlining the city’s polling places was to have more sites accessible for voters with disabilities.

But the new polling place list shows that less than 10% of the locations are accessible for voters with disabilities, down from nearly 20% in the primary. The board entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2017 over violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The target set in the agreement was to make 100% of polling places accessible by November 2018 but was amended in 2019 to make the new deadline November 2022.

Bever said the agreement will likely be amended again.

“That is still not where we’d like to see where that’s at. And that will still take a good amount of work,” he said. “But it was important to make sure that we had everything assigned this year and our teams will continue to follow up to find as many accessible locations moving forward.”

Bever said that the board intends to add more polling places for the 2023 mayoral and city election.

Kinsey Crowley is a freelance reporter.