Illinois Treasurer's Race Tracker
UPDATE: 11/10 (6:30pm)
Ok, I went through all of the election authorities that have a website and data, here are the updates:
- Kane County - there are 241 new votes over what was previously reported and Mike Frerichs had a net gain of 50 votes.
- Logan County - There are 337 new votes over what was previously reported and Tom Cross had a net gain of 148 votes.
- Ogle County - there is 1 new vote over what was previously reported and it went to Cross so a net gain of 1 vote for Cross.
Tomorrow is a holiday so I wouldn't expect many updates. I'll keep an eye on Cook, Chicago and the various collar counties just in case.
End of Update.
UPDATE: 11/10 (2:30pm)
Just checked Cook and Chicago and Cook had an update. There are 1,244 new votes over what was previously reported and Mike Frerichs had a net gain of 254. The margin now stands at Cross with a lead of 393 votes.
I'll check all of the election authorities for updates tonight when I get home from work.
End of Update.
UPDATE: 11/10 (8:00am)
Before work this morning I double checked Chicago, Cook, Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Aurora, Will, Winnebago and Rockford. The only update was in Kane where there were 1,314 new votes over what was previously reported and Tom Cross had a net gain of 1 vote.
I'll check all of the election authorities for updates tonight when I get home from work.
End of Update.
UPDATE: 11/9 (10:30pm)
I haven't looked through all of the various election authorities to see if there are any additional updates, it being the weekend I wasn't expecting any, but I got a text from Rich Miller tonight telling me there were new Chicago numbers and he's right so I have updated the tracker. The City of Chicago added just shy of 14,000 votes to their already reported totals and Frerichs netted a little more than 8,500 of them. The difference is now down to a very slim lead for Tom Cross of 646 votes.
End of Update.
UPDATE: 11/7 (6:30pm)
Today's updates:
- City of Rockford - they added 423 votes to their existing totals, Frerichs had a net gain of 164 votes.
- Cook County Suburbs - they added 7,454 votes to their existing totals, Frerichs had a net gain of 2,029 votes.
End of Update.
UPDATE: 11/6 (11pm)
I went to all the election authority websites again tonight and updated any data that was new in the tracker. Here's a summary of what's new:
- City of Chicago - they finally included the last 6 uncounted precincts in their totals, they now have 100% precincts reporting. It appears that the City of Chicago totals only show regular votes, it doesn't appear they have vote by mail votes or any provisionals (including same day registration) counted. See more on that here. Frerichs had a net gain here of 1,171 votes.
- Cook County Suburbs - they added a little over 6,500 votes to their existing numbers, I'm guessing these were vote by mail ballots. Frerichs had a net gain here of 1,509 votes.
- Jackson County - they added almost 1,700 votes to their existing numbers, Frerichs had a net gain of 53 votes.
- City of Rockford - they added about 600 votes to their existing totals, Frerichs had a net gain of 231 votes.
- Ogle County - they added 4 votes to their existing totals, Frerichs had a net gain of 2.
I had heard that Will County was supposed to have some updated numbers, which most likely would have added to Cross' advantage but they haven't updated anything yet.
Also here are a few known issues:
- Fulton County - I went to check to see if there was any update and tonight I couldn't find a link to their totals. Not sure if I am just missing it or what. I swear it was there last night.
- Jersey County - I am still using the AP's numbers here. The numbers they have listed on their website are so small they can't be right. The AP's numbers are consistent with historical norms, the numbers they have listed just seem like there has to be an error. I'll keep an eye on this.
- Marshall County - their website was down tonight and displaying a server error.
- 20 Small Counties - all the data in pink on the tracker is still just what the AP reported for these 20 small counties. Most of them don't even have a county website so short of calling them all I can't verify the AP's reported numbers.
End of Update.
Illinois Treasurer's Race Tracker
As of right now the tracker shows Tom Cross with a 14,373 vote lead. There are still 6 precincts in the City of Chicago that have not reported, all the rest in the state are in.
These are the six Chicago precincts left to report:
08-14
15-08
31-22
33-14
34-11
43-02
However that doesn't tell the whole story, there are still many additional uncounted votes, I'm just not sure how many. The Illinois Attorney General instructed election authorities that they could not count any of the early vote or vote by mail until after 7pm on election night. It used to be that the first results you would see on election night were the early voting numbers because those were counted in advance, but not anymore because they were instructed that they could not count them in advance.
So even though 109 of the 110 election authorities are showing 100% of their precincts reporting we are still likely to see the vote totals increase as more votes are counted. These are the three types of votes that may still need to be counted:
- Early Vote votes - these should be the easiest/quickest to count and may already have been counted in most jurisdictions but I can't say for sure.
- Vote by Mail votes - I'm told that in the larger election authorities these didn't even start to get counted until yesterday at the earliest for some and not yet at all for others, also because of the mail these may still be coming in. As long as they were postmarked by Monday 11/3 the election authorities can still accept them up until 11/18. Also, since they were not allowed to open and count these in advance there are some election authorities that are still counting them.
- Provisional Ballot votes - this includes same day registration votes, and we saw the long lines for these votes in the City of Chicago as the last voters weren't done until 3am. Also, there were reports of voters in Chicago who had registered recently having to fill out provisional ballots. Typically provisional ballots do not have a high success rate but it seems that there will be some valid provisional votes that need to be counted.
The problem is that of the vote totals currently publicly available you cannot tell which of the three types of potentially uncounted votes above are included or not included in the totals and it will vary by election authority.
For example, yesterday Chicago reported 17 of their 23 uncounted precincts (only 6 remaining) and Frerichs picked up a 4,800 vote advantage. Chicago appeared to only be updating election day votes, not mail or provisional votes.
Then late last night the Cook County Board of Elections updated their numbers even though they had already been reporting 100% of the precincts reporting and Frerichs gained another 1,100 vote advantage. Also at some point both DuPage and McHenry added votes to their totals over what was in the AP's election night totals and Cross picked up advantages of 3,680 and 4,891 respectively. I'm assuming that most of these are Vote by Mail votes but I don't know for sure.
I'm lead to believe that Chicago is still only counting election night votes, they haven't updated vote by mail votes and provisionals but I can't say for sure.
Additionally, it's hard to say for sure that the many counties throughout the state that are counting additional votes are making the updated data available on their websites. It's customary for these areas to have some data available on election night that are unofficial results and then they don't update the data again until after the numbers are official in about a month. Not every area has the sophisticated IT systems that you typically see in the bigger counties so the quality of the information varies. In fact, for about 20 election authorities the only data we have is what the AP reported on election night because some of the smaller counties don't even have a website at all.
CHECK MY WORK:
Here's how my tracker works, start by scrolling all the way to the bottom. You'll see the data for all 110 election authorities listed there. Every report above this raw data on my tracker is just an aggregation of this raw data. This is the data that I went and entered manually after looking up every EA's website last night. It was manual data entry so it's always possible that I typed something wrong or accidentally transposed Cross' and Frerichs' numbers in one county or another, but I ran a number of checks to see that the math came out right and it appears that it did. Also, you'll see a URL for most of these election authorities, you can follow those links to lookup the publicly available vote totals in each area. If you see one that has different data or more updated data than what's in the tracker let me know and I'll update the numbers. The numbers listed in pink are for the election authorities that have no publicly available data, in most cases they don't even have a website so the pink numbers are the numbers that the AP was reporting on election night. I can't verify that these pink numbers are accurate, it's just the only numbers we have.
But for now this is the most up to date count I know of anywhere. I have a day job that I can't neglect but I'll try to keep the info as current as possible, if you see anything new send a note here.
P.S. Projected Vote Totals:
On my tracker it's best to just ignore the Projected Vote total numbers. Those calculations can't account for uncounted vote when 100% of the precincts are reporting, those are only useful for election night when only part of the vote is in. Please don't assume that they are projecting what the mail and provisional votes might be, they are not.
