Article 16
Ballots
10 ILCS 5/16-9 — Voter Guidance
The election authorities shall prepare full instructions for the guidance of voters at each election as to obtaining ballots, as to the manner of marking them and the method of gaining assistance and as to obtaining new ballots in place of those accidentally spoiled; and they shall respectively cause the same to be printed in large, clear type, on separate cards, to be called cards of instruction; and the election authorities shall furnish to the judges of election a sufficient number of such cards of instruction to enable the judges of election to comply with the provisions of this article.
How to Use This Guide
This is a guide to the Illinois Compiled Statutes Election Code (ILCS) as it relates to poll watchers.
Not all election code statutes are included; provisions unrelated to poll watcher duties have been intentionally omitted.
This guide is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to Illinois election law; it includes only those sections which are of interest to poll watchers.
The election code is copied verbatim from the ILCS website. There are no changes to the wording of the statutes, but formatting decisions were made which include:
Changes to the underlying HTML code to make linking more efficient.
Changes to enhance accessibility.
Changes may include creating additional paragraphs out of existing text in order to make the text more readable.
Section headings were added.
Except for the addition of section headings and formatting for readability and accessibility, the statutory wording is unchanged.
Each page includes the date it was last updated and a link to the original ILCS website for that statute.”
This guide will be maintained through the 2026 election cycle. Maintenance of this guide will end on Election Day, November 3, 2026.
Every effort has been made to keep the information up to date, but, as the Legislative Reference Bureau, as part of the Illinois Secretary of State's Office writes of the ILCS database:
Updating the database of the Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS) is an ongoing process. Recent laws may not yet be included in the ILCS database, but they are found on this site as Public Acts soon after they become law. For information concerning the relationship between statutes and Public Acts, refer to the Guide.
Because the statute database is maintained primarily for legislative drafting purposes, statutory changes are sometimes included in the statute database before they take effect. If the source note at the end of a Section of the statutes includes a Public Act that has not yet taken effect, the version of the law that is currently in effect may have already been removed from the database and you should refer to that Public Act to see the changes made to the current law.
The Law Index and individual statute pages are reference tools and should not be used independently of the full Poll Watcher Guide.
This guide is for educational use. It is not legal advice.