Decatur Vote is temporarily closed, and will not be covering the March 19th, 2024 Primaries.
The website lists all of the local candidates, but does not list state or federal candidates, and it is not going to before March 19th.
I hope to re-open Decatur Vote in a timely manner and cover the November 2024 elections, but I can't promise this.
In the mean time, I will not be responding to most emails, Facebook messages, reviewing tips, or pursuing stories. I may be working on the website and other software behind-the-scenes. I will still be available to publish corrections and redactions.
To request corrections or redactions on this site, email reed@decaturvote.com.
Macon County Elections
The only races to watch, for Macon County Primaries, are the Coroner race and Precinct Committeepersons.
See Coroner Candidates. There are three Republicans, so you will select one Republican on March 19th. There is only one Democrat, so there will be no Democrat competition for Coroner on the 19th.
See Precinct Committeepersons. I have not reviewed candidates for this race, and do not know which precincts, if any, have competition.
State & Federal Elections
You can download a list of state primary candidates and federal primary candidates.
You may also check the Illinois Election 2024 page on BallotPedia, or look up other news sources.
Why is Decatur Vote temporarily closing?
In short: because of a major depressive episode.
I, Reed Sutman, am the owner and sole worker at Decatur Vote. I've lived with mental illness for years: Depression, Anxiety, and possibly OCD.
While not an official diagnosis, this has long been a struggle & I get therapy weekly as treatment.
For the past few years, I've been able to manage my illness and still be productive about 15-30 hours most weeks, depending how I'm doing.
In mid December of 2023, I fell into a major depressive episode. Since then, I have been almost completely unable to work, and have struggled more than normal to do basic self-care like laundry, dishes, and cleaning up.
I've had bad depressive episodes before, but never one that remained this severe for this long.
It is February 11th at time of writing this. For the last 3 or 4 weeks, I've been trying to push myself to work even though I've been so unwell.
These efforts have been mostly fruitless, and have mainly served to increase my stress during a time of suffering and struggle.
So. I'm sad to say that I will be temporarily closing Decatur Vote.
What's next for Decatur Vote
I've long envisioned Decatur Vote as a stepping stone. I'm an expert software developer, and my goal was to make open source website software that folks in other communities could use to help catalogue their local elections.
I also really wanted to serve my own community, which has disappointingly little election information available online for local races.
I've partially succeeded in covering previous elections - not meeting all my goals, but providing significantly more coverage and insight than Herald & Review or WAND.
Then after the 2023 municipal election, I started working on investigative journalism - particularly with regard to the Decatur Public School District.
In the long term, I'd like Decatur Vote to pursue this investigative work that I personally feel our local outlets fail to do. But this will not be a priority until I get a stronger base of local election and local politics news.
If I recover from this depressive episode, and my life circumstances continue to allow me to focus on Decatur Vote, then:
- The website will see major updates
- Most the software behind Decatur Vote will be made open source. Some already is.
- The November 2024 election will be covered, including platforms for local candidates
- Future elections will be covered
- More local political news will be reported
I don't know how this is going to turn out. Hopefully I'm able to recover from this and continue working on Decatur Vote.
I'm sorry for this news.
I wish you well in finding candidate information & making your choices as a voter.