Heading To The Polls? Remember These Pointers

By Chuck Sudo in News on Nov 6, 2012 5:00PM

Polling places across Chicago will be open until 7 p.m. tonight and if you're heading to vote today undecided about how you're going to vote ... well, we can't do anything for you.

What we can do is at least recommend you know where your polling place is located. The redistricting of electoral maps in Illinois means you may be in a new precinct and your old polling place may no longer apply to you.

The easiest way to find the location of your polling place—and to ensure your voter registration status is squared away—is by searching online at the Illinois Board of Elections. (We recommend you go there as confusion over the redistricting may have contributed to the crashing of the Chicago Board of Elections website this morning.) You can also use the website to confirm all districts related to your precinct, from your congressional district through your County Board of Review area.

Another resource to find your polling place is Vote411.com.

In addition to the presidential, congressional and state rep races, down the ballot you'll find the usual assortment of judicial vacancies and retention questions. If you want to be reasonably informed on these, the Chicago Appleseed Fund's "Vote for Judges" project is a handy resource for judicial evaluations and ballot summaries from the Chicago bar Association, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening, the Judicial Performance Commission of Cook County, and Chicago Tribune endorsements. Mobile device users can click here and take that to the ballot box.

The first part of the ballot includes binding and non-binding referendums. The most important of those is Constitutional Amendment 49. We wrote about this last week. The Daily Illini reports that, despite more editorials and stories on the amendment, voters are still unaware it's in the ballot.