Voters in Democratic strongholds like Chicago seem to be pretty excited about voting by mail for the first time, largely due to cable news networks and the Democrats’ fearmongering over in-person voting. In fact, they’re so excited about it that they’ve been requesting mail-in ballots in record numbers. And these aren’t minor records, either. While the county clerk’s offices may only get a few thousand requests in a “normal” year, this year they have received 450,000 just from Chicago and another 437,000 from suburban Cook County. But some prospective voters are telling CBS News in the Windy City that they sent in their applications as soon as they received them but they still haven’t gotten a ballot. And the clock is ticking.
There have been a historic number of vote-by-mail requests just from Chicago so far in the 2020 election with 450,000 just from Chicago, but there are plenty of concerns from voters, including whether the clerk’s offices can handle those record numbers.
A woman in the north suburbs told CBS 2 she called the county clerk’s office with concerns about her ballot and was told they have received so many mail-in ballot applications they have not been able to send them all out.
Like thousands of others, Laura wants to vote by mail for the first time this year.
“It just seemed like the way to do it this year,” she said.
The woman identified as “Laura” in the story has reason to be concerned. She’s called the clerk’s office twice now and received no satisfaction. They keep telling her to try the online tracking system that’s been set up so people can find out the status of their ballot, but it keeps telling her that they’ve never even received her request. The clerk keeps telling her not to worry because she will most certainly be receiving her ballot soon.
I’m sure she has nothing to worry about. After all, she’s in Chicago. That’s the renowned home of one of the most honest and forthcoming municipal governments in the country.
Okay, enough sarcasm. Chicago is a huge city. The population density is pretty much what you’d expect for a metropolitan area of that size. And they’ve never done mass mail-in voting before. Those clerks are used to seeing a relative handful of ballot requests on any given day. Now they’re telling CBS that the Cook County Clerk’s Office received nearly 440,000 ballot requests since September 24 running through October 6. We’re talking about 13 days.
While I was told there would be no math associated with this job, let’s see what we can sketch out on the back of a cocktail napkin here. 437,000 ballots received in 13 days comes out to more than 33,600 applications per day. The clerk’s office assured the worried voter (and CBS) that they were mailing out 10,000 ballots every day. Anyone starting to see the problem here? They’ve been getting, on average, 23,600 more requests than they were able to process every day. By the time we’re out to day 14, as we are now, they should be roughly 330,400 ballots in the hole. Even if they don’t get any more applications after this, if they can only process and send out 10,000 ballots per day, they should finish this little chore on… November 9th.
But hey, don’t let a little thing like math frighten you. This is the City of Big Shoulders. What could possibly go wrong?
