Now that county elections have come and gone, the next question is the changes they will bring about.

According to Andrew McNitt and Richard Wandling, political science professors, there won’t be any significant changes for students or residents in Coles County.

“The major effect is Democrats will feel bad for a couple of weeks, and the Republicans will feel good for a couple of weeks,” McNitt said.

Wandling agreed.

“Students are more affected by municipal elections than county elections,” he said.

For example, the Charleston Police Department will have more of an impact on students than the Sheriff’s Department because the Sheriff’s Department’s jurisdiction is outside municipal boundaries. One of the only times that students will run into the Sheriff’s Department is if they’re jailed, McNitt said.

Rural residents of the county are much more affected by the Sheriff’s Department, which is why there was a more active campaign in those parts of the county, Wandling said.

This is largely because of the politics of Coles County elections, which are different than federal, state or even county elections in larger counties. Candidates in county elections focus their campaigns on going out and talking to the people as opposed to spending money on advertising. This is not true for Cook County or even Champaign County, where two candidates for county board spent money to advertise on television, McNitt said.

Candidates that win usually are more recognized in the community and are less affected by the “systematic ideology” of their party, Wandling said. This is because their duties are standard and run by state law. A treasurer collects taxes and invests money; a sheriff enforces the law; and a county clerk registers citizens to vote and helps out with the elections. As a result, this year there were no particular policy differences between candidates, McNitt said.

If an incumbent candidate does a responsible, competent job in office, it is difficult for a newcomer to defeat him, he said.

Candidate for county clerk Sue Rennels won largely because “everyone knows her,” Wandling said.

“Right away that was a resource she could build on,” he said.

Wandling said it is easy to see Rennels’ support just by going to parades. The amount of people with T-shirts, flashing Rennels’ signs, is huge.

Keith Taylor, on the other hand, is a graduate student, and his focus is on being a student. Taylor’s campaign, as a result, was practically non-existent, Wandling said.

Name recognition also helped candidate for sheriff’s office Darrell Cox win. Cox has been a law enforcer for Coles County for 28 years, while his opponent, Charles “Chub” Conner, has lived in Coles County for only two years. If this had been flip-flopped, had Conner been a law enforcer for 28 years and Cox a resident of Coles County for two, Wandling had no doubts that Conner would have won.

“A candidate’s party is just one variable in the mix,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that parties are irrelevant at the county level.

“In Illinois, county parties are the building blocks of the state parties,” Wandling said. “Parties definitely begin to look somewhat different in their policy positions once we get to the state level. The 102 separate county-based party organizations in Illinois serve as the foundation for recruiting future office holders.”

A party that cannot win at the county level is not “off to a good start in making the next step” to the state level, he said.

Being affiliated with a party usually brings a portion of votes to a candidate as well, unless these people have good knowledge of some sort of maladministration on the candidate’s part. Usually, however, these people give their candidate the benefit of the doubt, McNitt said.

So the politics differ than state and federal elections, but what exactly does this mean for students?

“The functioning of the state judicial system at the local level has much to do with offices such as the state’s attorney, circuit clerk and county sheriff,” Wandling said.

“As another example, because the county clerk in Coles County administers the election system, students definitely should care about that office.”

In Coles County, the property tax is determined at the county level, and, while many students don’t think much of property taxes, they have “at least have indirect impacts on the quality of their lives,” he said.