Letter from the Editor: Be patient with this year's election results
Two years ago, 3% of the vote in suburban Cook County was counted after Election Day - provisional ballots or mailed ballots that were postmarked in time but arrived later.
The thing is, in Illinois this is not unusual. Two years ago, the numbers were 4% in DuPage County and 2% in Kane, Lake and Will counties. McHenry County, well, that was an outlier because computer problems on election night pushed a lot of the tabulation to the next day.
Most of the time, the late votes aren't significant enough to alter what appears on election night to be the outcome of the race. But it does happen.
In 2018, state Rep. Helene Miller Walsh of the Mundelein area led her challenger, Mary Edly-Allen of Libertyville, by one vote when the first-day results were posted, but by the time the late votes came in Edly-Allen rode the Blue Wave to a 373-vote victory.
With the volume of mail-in voting this year, uncertainty on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning is likely to be greater than normal - including perhaps in the presidential race and likely on the referendum about the graduated income tax amendment.
We respect the system and we appreciate our obligation to you to get it right, so we will be cautious about proclaiming apparent winners.
Please be patient with us.
More importantly, please be patient with the democracy - and skeptical of premature declarations of victory.
Thank you for reading.