Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born pontiff whose birth name is Robert Francis Prevost, has requested a vote-by-mail ballot for the 3 November 2026 US midterm elections in his home state of Illinois. The request, confirmed by the Will County Clerk’s Office, could lead to a historic first: if he completes and returns the ballot and it is accepted, he would become the first sitting pope known to have voted in a US election, and, according to the specialist outlet Letters from Leo, the first pontiff in the Catholic Church’s roughly 2,000-year history to vote in any nation’s civil election. But that history has not yet been made — as of Thursday 29 October 2026, the clerk’s office had not received a completed ballot from him, and it is not yet known whether he has filled it out or returned it.
The distinction between requesting a ballot and casting a vote is the heart of this story, and it is worth stating plainly at the outset. Headlines that say the pope “is voting” or “has voted” go beyond what is confirmed. What is confirmed is the request. What is not confirmed is the vote. That gap may close in the coming days if a completed ballot arrives, or it may remain if the ballot is never returned. Either way, the request itself is newsworthy, because it shows a sitting pope maintaining his civic status as a registered American voter even while leading a global church from Vatican City.
What Will County confirmed
The Will County Clerk’s Office confirmed the request in unusually direct terms. Chief of staff Kim Fladhammer told the Chicago Sun-Times that “Robert Francis Prevost is on the list of individuals who requested a vote by mail ballot for the upcoming election”. The request was made on 3 October 2026, and Leo remains registered to vote in Will County, at a New Lenox address, despite now living in Vatican City. WJOL in Joliet first reported the request on 23 October, citing sources who said someone close to the pope had asked for the ballot to be sent to his registered New Lenox address, which belongs to his brother John.
Illinois allows registered voters to vote by mail without giving a specific reason, and the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act provides voting arrangements for eligible US citizens living abroad. State officials said vote-by-mail requests for the November election had to be received by 29 October. Leo’s request, made on 3 October, was therefore well within the deadline. The mechanics of how a completed ballot would travel from Vatican City to Will County — whether by mail, by courier, or carried by a family member — have not been publicly described, and neither the Vatican nor his family has said whether the ballot has been completed or carried back.
The Illinois ballot itself is substantial. It includes the US Senate seat being vacated by Dick Durbin, the governor’s race, in which JB Pritzker is seeking re-election, US House races, and state and local offices. If Leo’s ballot is returned and accepted, his vote would count in those races like any other Will County voter’s. There is no suggestion that his ballot would receive special treatment, and no reason it should: the interest of the story lies in who the voter is, not in any difference in how his vote would be counted.
Pope Leo XIV vote by mail ballot: why it would be a first
Leo, aged 70–71 in reporting, became the first American pope in May 2025. That fact alone made his civic status a matter of curiosity: previous popes were citizens of other countries, and many came from eras or circumstances in which voting in a national election was not an option for a man who had become pope. The claim that Leo would be the first sitting pope to vote rests on the absence of any known prior case — no record of any previous pontiff casting a ballot in a civil election while in office. It is a historical claim based on negative evidence, which is why it should be phrased carefully: the first known case, not a certainty proven by exhaustive records of every papal act across two millennia. Still, the absence is striking, and the specialist press has treated it as a genuine first.
The story also touches on a broader question about the relationship between religious leadership and civic participation. Popes have traditionally stood above national politics, speaking to universal moral questions rather than taking sides in elections. Voting, however, is a private act, not a public endorsement, and American citizens living abroad routinely vote by mail without it being treated as a political statement. Leo’s request can therefore be read in two ways: as an ordinary exercise of citizenship by an American living overseas, or as a symbolic moment in which the head of the Catholic Church participates directly in the democratic process of his home country. Both readings are plausible, and the Vatican has not offered guidance on which it prefers, because it has not commented on his voting intention at all.
That silence is itself notable. The Vatican is usually careful about statements that could be read as political, and a comment on whether the pope intends to vote — let alone how he intends to vote — would invite exactly the kind of speculation it prefers to avoid. The absence of a Vatican statement means the story rests entirely on the Will County confirmation and the reporting around it, which is a solid foundation for the request but no foundation at all for claims about his intentions or his choices.
His Illinois voting history
Will County voting records reported by ABC News, NBC News and the Chicago Sun-Times show a voter who participated across party lines over many years. Prevost took Democratic primary ballots in 2008 and 2010 and Republican primary ballots in 2012, 2014 and 2016, and cast general-election ballots in 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2024. Illinois has no party registration, so voters choose a party’s primary ballot at each primary election rather than registering with a party in advance. That system makes primary-ballot history a weak guide to a voter’s current views, since a voter may choose a primary ballot for many reasons — including a wish to vote in the more competitive primary in a given year — and the pattern across 2008 to 2016 shows a voter who did not stay loyal to one party’s primary.
He did not vote in Illinois’ March 2026 primary, which is unsurprising given that he had become pope the previous year and was living in Vatican City. The gap makes the October 2026 request more interesting, not less: after missing the primary, he took the step of requesting a general-election ballot, suggesting a deliberate decision to maintain his participation rather than letting his registration lapse into inactivity. Whether that decision reflects personal conviction, family encouragement, or simply the routine action of someone who has voted for decades, is not publicly known, and speculation would add nothing reliable.
It is also worth noting what the voting history does not show. It does not show how Prevost voted in any general election, because American ballots are secret, and primary-ballot choices reveal only which party’s primary he participated in, not which candidates he supported. Anyone who claims to know Leo’s political views from his primary history is over-reading the record. The history establishes that he is a long-standing voter, not a partisan, and that is the only safe inference to draw from it.
What happens next
The next development, if there is one, will be procedural: the Will County Clerk’s Office will either receive a completed ballot from Prevost or it will not, and the deadline for receipt will determine whether a late arrival can still count. Illinois election officials will not announce the contents of any ballot, and the public may never know for certain whether the pope’s vote was cast, unless the clerk’s office confirms receipt in general terms or the Vatican chooses to say something. That uncertainty may frustrate readers who want a clean ending to a historic story, but it is the nature of secret ballots: the act of voting is private, even when the voter is the pope.
If the ballot does arrive and is accepted, the historic claim will be complete, and the story will shift from “could become the first” to “has become the first”. If it does not, the story remains what it already is: a sitting pope who requested a ballot, maintaining his registration and his connection to his home state, without — on the current evidence — completing the act. Both outcomes are consistent with the facts as they stand, and responsible reporting should keep the conditional language until the facts change. The request is historic enough on its own. The vote, if it comes, will be history. Until then, it is a request, confirmed by the clerk, awaiting its ending.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Firstpost, Parade and The Catholic Herald.