The votes officially have been counted and there will be four Galesburg City Council members sworn in on Monday night, including three new members.
Voter turnout in Galesburg was 13 percentage points higher than in 2019, the last municipal election in which the Mayor wasn’t up for election; about 21 percent up from 8 percent.
Turnout nearly even matched 2021 when there was a competitive race for Galesburg Mayor.
No ward had a better turnout in 2023 than Ward 7 with about 38 percent of registered voters casting ballots.
In fact, although Ward 7’s winner Steve Cheesman had the most votes of any aldermanic candidate, his opponent Larry Cox had the second most votes.
Ward 5 had a turnout of 26 percent, followed by Ward 1 with 24 percent and Ward 3 with 18 percent.
Even though Ward 3 had the lowest turnout among the Wards with competitive races, the turnout was much higher than in 2019 when their turnout was about 5 percent.
Ward 6 showed themselves to be reliable voters. Even though there was no Council race for them to vote on they had a turnout of 17.5 percent.
