CHICAGO — Amid deepening national tensions over election integrity, local elections officials on Tuesday announced a bolstered group of field investigators will be on hand across Chicago to help ensure a smooth final day of in-person voting.

The chair of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, Marisel Hernandez, said Tuesday morning that the board upped the number of its field investigators. The elections authority will have 225 field investigators on patrol throughout the city and another 225 on call, she said.

“We want the safest election we can have,” she told reporters as the downtown voting “supersite” opened. “And that meant having additional field investigators.”

The U.S. Department of Justice notified Chicago authorities that it would send monitors to polling places, as it has done in previous years, Hernandez said.

“I’m confident that that will work out smoothly,” she added.

Just after 6 a.m., there was no line on the corner of Adams and State streets at the downtown supersite.

John Powers, one of the morning’s first voters, had stopped by on his way to work. He pointed to Pritzker’s reelection bid as one motivator for his vote.

“I feel like Illinois is on the right track,” said Powers, an artificial intelligence consultant. “Gov. Pritzker’s done a great job, from my perspective, for the last several years.”

The gubernatorial race was also top of mind for another early-morning voter, schoolteacher Hannah Doty. She grew up in downstate Illinois and, being aware of Darren Bailey’s background, said she disagreed with the Republican nominee’s worldview.

Chicago voters’ first-ever chance to choose a Board of Education president and a fully elected school board also was important to her, though she doesn’t teach at a public school.

“I am always concerned when any one organization, or whatever it is, has too much power and too much control,” Doty said, referring to the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, which has been active in the campaign.

As of late Monday night, about 1.6 million Illinois voters had cast early ballots across the state, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections. More than 900,000 had voted early in person, and nearly 700,000 mail ballots had been returned.

After the final campaign weekend, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners said nearly 300,000 early votes had been cast as of Monday — more than 180,000 in person and more than 100,000 by mail. Early voting in the city looked likely to outpace the 297,759 early ballots cast four years ago. In that election, nearly 180,000 people voted early in person and more than 118,000 cast ballots through the mail.

Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon’s office said Monday that early voting totals in the suburbs dwarfed those seen four years ago. As of midday Monday, more than a quarter-million early votes were cast in Cook County suburbs, a 31% increase from 2022.

Mail-in voting also was strong, with nearly 107,000 mail ballots returned to the clerk’s office and an additional 11,000 ballots currently in the U.S. Postal Service pipeline. Gordon said she expects vote-by-mail participation to exceed the 122,600 ballots cast by mail in 2022.

“These numbers reflect strong voter engagement across our communities, and we encourage everyone who has not yet cast a ballot to make a plan to vote,” Gordon said in a statement.

The federal Justice Department said it was sending approximately 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states in the largest ever mobilization of the agency’s lawyers to watch polling places for possible civil rights violations, such as intimidation and racial discrimination.

Gordon said election judges are prepared to respond “if any situation arises.” “We want every voter to know that their right to vote is protected, and our job is to make sure they have the opportunity to exercise that right,” she said.

The Illinois attorney general’s office took note of the Department of Justice activity, issuing a statement late last week noting that federal poll monitors are not new and have traditionally been deployed to ensure compliance with federal voting laws. The office said it has been in contact with the federal agency and had no reason to believe the federal monitors would be engaged in anything but their traditional role.

In this year’s election, Gov. JB Pritzker is seeking his third term, once again facing off against downstate farmer and former state representative Darren Bailey. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton faces former Illinois Republican party chair Don Tracy in the race for U.S. Senate with the impending retirement of Sen. Dick Durbin.

Pritzker, Christian Mitchell — his running mate for lieutenant governor — and Stratton were scheduled to make a series of Election Day appearances at CTA train stations, restaurants and schools in Roseland, Hyde Park, Austin, Lincoln Park Little Village and the South Loop.

Also on ballots across the state are all 118 seats in the Illinois House, 39 seats in the 59-member state Senate and all 17 of Illinois’ seats in the U.S. House. In Chicago, residents will cast ballots for all 21 members of the Board of Education, including the president, for the first time.

Other local races include those for county clerk, sheriff and treasurer throughout Illinois, as well as Cook County assessor, along with judicial candidates and judges seeking retention.

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