The November election results in the city of Peoria took longer than usual. This year will see some significant changes to the election process.
About 700 more people voted absentee in the mid-term than the last presidential election that saw nearly 20-thousand more votes cast. Tom Bride is the Director of the City Election Commission. He says the changes for 2016 allow processing the mailed ballots starting 15 days before the election instead of waiting until after the polls close:
“Unfortunately in November they didn’t see the absentee by mail results until 11pm. They’ll see those much earlier because we will have all of those process and ready to count by 7pm and it doesn’t take very long to count them.”
The term “absentee” voting is also leaving the vernacular, now to be called vote by mail. Those ballots can also be postmarked through election day.