The Champaign County Clerk’s office sent out an email enumerating several of its accomplishments in 2020. Among them is incredible election management in a pandemic, at least in our opinion.
Check out this list:
- We increased the number of Early Voting locations from 10-12; We added another location on the campus of the University of Illinois and Parkland College.
- We increased the number of people who voted by mail by 400%. Over 32,000 people requested VBM’s (2k people surrendered their ballot and voted in person) while over 28K returned them by mail or via drop boxes. We eclipsed the County’s previous high of 8,000 VBM’s by over 20,000!
- We had an amazing 92% return rate for vote by mail.
- While decreasing the number of polling locations and saving taxpayers money, we increased the overall voter turnout. The previous record for voter turnout in a Presidential election in Champaign County was 92,842. We turned out 96,185 voters, an increase of 3,343!
- We created the Safe Vote Coalition (SVC) that consisted of Julie Pryde of CU Public Health, State Senator Scott Bennet, State Representative Carol Ammons, Champaign Mayor Deb Feinen, League of Women Voters, SEIU Local 73, AFSCME Council 31, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 149, various fraternities and sororities, NAACP of Champaign County, as well as other concerned citizens.
- We partnered with the U of I and Parkland College to encourage students to vote.
- We implemented Drop Boxes all over Champaign-Urbana
- We implemented Drive and Drops in Rantoul, Mahomet, Tolono and St. Joe
- We created a position called Sanitation Workers. These workers cleaned polling locations and assisted with traffic control (paid for by a grant from the United Way and CU Public Health).
- We trained over 600 judges via zoom over a 4-5 week period of time!
- We worked with Julie Pryde to provide curbside voting for people who tested positive for Covid.
I know we’re still not done with the 2020 election, but don’t forget that our local 2021 elections are happening quite soon. Check your registration, view your sample ballot, and request your vote by mail ballot now.
Top image from Champaign County Clerk’s Facebook page.
