A newly-formed election commission held its first meeting last week. It’s the new group running elections for Peoria County.
Voters last year approved a referendum to consolidate Peoria’s City and County election commissions. The new group includes five commissioners, who in turn appointed City Election director Tom Bride to lead the county-wide operations. Bride says the new commission will use city equipment to run the special congressional election for the 18th district:
“We’re comfortable in that phase. The voter registration database has been updated to include so that we have a county-wide voter registration base now.”
The special election is expected to cost the county more than $150,000. Bride says a long-term goal is to look for a larger building to house election equipment and office space:
“It’d be centrally located in the county on a main road, it’ll have access to public transportation, and it’ll be a better setup to handle early voting, so we should have more parking.”
Bride says the current city election office space will serve as a temporary home.