As Illinois Election Day 2022 approaches, here's what to know before voting

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Tuesday is Election Day. The major contests on the ballot in Illinois include governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

Voters will also be casting ballots in many Congressional races, one U.S. Senate race, county offices, state representatives and state senators.

Max Bever, director of Public Information for the Chicago Board of Elections said early voting had "really picked up over the last week."

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By Thursday evening, the city had over 93,000 early vote ballots and more than 89,000 vote-by-mail ballots returned so far.

"The big thing that we've seen is that we've had over 210,000 vote-by-mail ballot applications for this election, which is the second highest for the city of Chicago," Bever said.

For those who want to vote on Sunday, in-person, the city has 52 sites open.

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And Bever said any Chicago voter, regardless of where they live, can vote at any of those locations.

So what's being done in Chicago to ensure that votes are protected and accurately counted?

"In the state of Illinois, we are lucky that we have a paper ballot system, so one vote always goes onto a paper ballot, even if you're using a touch screen during early voting or voting at your precinct polling place," said Bever, "All machines are never connected to the internet because that is the first way that any hacker or any bad actor could have access to a vote. And we also for Election Day have a system of election investigators. We've got over 400 who are off-duty or retired police officers and law enforcement officers that help out our elections judges or election coordinators on Election Day. We're not expecting election judges to fend for themselves if there is any problem whatsoever on Election Day."

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Any voter in the city who sees something of concern is urged to call Election Central at 312-269-7870.

Heading into the weekend across Illinois, "We had just shy of a million ballots cast prior to Election Day," said Matt Dietrich with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Compared to 2018, the state has had a large increase in the number of vote-by-mail ballots that have been cast.

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Dietrich said it should surpass what was seen in 2018.

People have been seen monitoring vote drop boxes in Arizona.

Dietrich said, "We haven't seen it so far in Illinois, and we would hope that we aren't going to see it. We have no reason to believe that's going to happen. But we are also vigilant. We know what's happened elsewhere, we know the potential that it possibly could happen here so I think all local election authorities are aware of that and they're on the alert for anything inappropriate happening around those drop boxes."

To locate a voting site, visit chicagoelections.gov/en/home.html.