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> ChiRaq Election today > counting might go till March 14th Chicago mayoral election: 2 finalists may not be known for days as mail-in ballots are counted Published February 27, 2023 6:16PM CHICAGO - After months of campaigning and more than $24 million in spending, the decision on who will lead Chicago for the next four years is finally in the hands of voters. An April 4 mayoral runoff is virtually guaranteed. A nine-candidate field is almost certain to prevent any one candidate from receiving more than 50% of the vote. It’s even possible the two mayoral finalists won’t be known for a few days, as mail-in ballots are still being counted. The same is true for most, if not all, the hotly-contested aldermanic races. The high probability for delayed results stems from the number of mail-ballots. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners processed 214,000 vote-by-mail applications, but only 102,000 of those ballots had been returned as of noon Monday. Roughly 20,000 were expected to be returned at drop-boxes on Monday, according to board spokesperson Max Bever. And all mail ballots received by 7 p.m. Monday — either by mail or returned at one of 52 drop boxes at early voting sites — will be counted on election night, he said. That leaves roughly 80,000 to 90,000 vote-by-mail ballots that won’t be immediately reflected in election night results. Technically, the election board will count all mail ballots it receives by March 14, if they were postmarked by election day. That’s also the cutoff to count provisional ballots cast by voters who went to the wrong precinct. The official proclamation of winners comes right after that. Chicagoans shouldn’t have to wait that long to identify combatants in the April 4 mayoral runoff. But if the margin between the second- and third-place finishers is close, it still will take days to decide the runoff contenders. "It may take until this weekend to get the majority of the vote by mail ballots counted and those votes reflected in the results," Bever said. "The citywide campaign may not need to wait around for the extra 200 or 300 votes to be counted. They’re probably just looking for the majority of that vote by mail. We’ll get those over the next three to four days after election night. That generally happens by that Saturday or Sunday after the election." But in some City Council races, a winner might not be decided until after March 14, "because those races are much, much closer" with margins "into the double-digits or the single-digits. https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicago-mayoral-election-finalists-mail-in-ballots-runoff