Tazewell County Clerk says office was prepared for potential vote-by-mail changes

TAZEWELL COUNTY, Ill. – Tazewell’s County Clerk says his office was already preparing for any potential changes to vote-by-mail.

Those changes will not occur, at least for November’s elections, after the Supreme Court late Monday night voted to leave a lower court order in place blocking the Trump administration for implementing new rules.

The new rules would have given the Postal Service authority to regulate balloting by mail nationwide.  Some of the rules include uniform standards for all mail ballot envelopes, prohibiting mail carriers from transmitting ballots to or any person not listed on a federally approved voter list of U.S. citizens.

County Clerk John Ackerman says part of the reason his office was prepared for potential changes was because they’re meeting and exceeding some of those standards, partly due to state laws.

“We already have ballot trackers where citizens can track their ballots.  So here in Tazewell County, we were already above the new thresholds that were being laid out,” Ackerman said.

Ackerman says his one concern involved receiving information on updating a voter portal with the correct information.

Vote-by-mail ballots are expected to be mailed out on September 24th.