Early voting numbers for the 2025 General Consolidated Election are coming in below the expectations of Peoria County officials.
Peoria County Board of Election Commission Executive Director Elizabeth Gannon says, as of Friday, just more than 2,300 registered voters have cast their ballots early in person. Gannon says this number is on par with early votes cast at this point in the February primary.
However, while the primary just covered City of Peoria positions, the general election includes positions across the whole county.
“The numbers just aren’t there,” said Gannon. “And that could be because a lot of these smaller communities, or county communities, don’t really have any contested races, so it’s not driving turnout. I’m unsure what’s going on there, but we’re really just not as high in our early voting numbers as I really thought we would be.”
Gannon is highlighting the early voting opportunities that are still available ahead of Tuesday’s general election.
The Peoria Public Library’s downtown branch, the Alpha Park Library in Bartonville, the Dunlap Library and the election commission’s office are all early voting sites open for portions of Friday and Saturday. A detailed list of locations and times is available on the election commission’s website.
In addition to the in-person early votes, Gannon says around 5,000 vote-by-mail ballots have returned out of 20,000 sent out around the county. This is the first mayoral election since the State of Illinois implemented permanent vote-by-mail as an option for the state’s voters.
Gannon says it’s still unclear what sort of an impact permanent vote-by-mail has had on overall voter participation at this point.
“I think that we’re just seeing that shift from the number of people that would normally vote on Election Day are now voting by mail and it’s just kind of evening out in the end,” she said.
Gannon says there’s been another sticking point in getting voters out for the general election: some of them think their vote from February’s primary carries over.
“They think they’ve already participated when they voted in the primary and that’s just not the case,” she said. “The primary was the nomination process. This is the actual election process. This is the election that is going to put those candidates in office. So it’s very important to still participate in this April 1 election.”
Find out more about those candidates with WCBU’s Election 2025 coverage here.
