Window For Early Voting Closes This Weekend
(CBS) -- You've heard the saying "Vote early, vote often." Often is illegal – but early is encouraged.
If you want to beat the crowds on Election Day, Nov. 4, time is running out.
Early voting ends this Sunday.
CBS 2's Jim Williams reports.
There are dozens of early voting polling places in the city and suburbs. Election officials are encouraged by what they've seen so far.
There are seven fewer days to early-vote this year, but there's a payoff, says Langdon Neal, chairman of the Chicago Board of Elections.
"The shortening has helped because being 22 days in front of the election, it was too early," he says. "Many voters simply hadn't made up their minds yet, so we compressed the period, and now we have voters who are ready to vote."
Neal says compared to four years ago -- also a non-presidential election -- early voting and absentee voting numbers are up.
It's smooth sailing in the suburbs, too, according to Cook County Clerk David Orr. Some 58,000 voters have cast ballots since Oct. 20, according to a tweet Orr posted Monday.
"Lots of people are voting. We may well break a record, comparing us to 2010," he says.
But there was a fly in the ointment in the northwest suburbs, says Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan. He says he was wrongly counted as having voted for his opponent.
Moynihan is quick say he's not charging a voting conspiracy in heavily Democratic Cook County.
Still, he says, "God knows how long it was in service before they took it down."
Orr says the malfunction only happened a relative few times. It has since been fixed, he says.
