Pope Leo XIV has cast a ballot in an American election, becoming the first sitting pope known to vote in a United States election. The Vatican confirmed on Friday that the Chicago-born pontiff submitted a mail-in ballot from Vatican City for Illinois in the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3. The Holy See Press Office framed the act not as a political statement, but as a private exercise of citizenship by a pope who has voted whenever he was eligible to do so.
For a figure whose office is defined by neutrality, the ballot is a remarkable collision of two worlds. Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, remains a United States citizen even as he serves as head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City. His vote, cast from Vatican City and mailed to a county clerk's office outside Chicago, makes him what historians say is likely the first pope ever to take part in a secular democratic election.
A Ballot From Vatican City
The Vatican announced the vote in a brief statement on Friday, October 30. "Pope Leo XIV has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen, whenever he was eligible to do so," the Holy See Press Office said. "In keeping with this long-standing practice of civic participation, he has submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago."
The ballot's journey began weeks earlier. Leo is registered to vote in New Lenox, a suburb in Will County, Illinois, under his baptismal name, Robert Francis Prevost. According to the Will County Clerk's Office, he requested his mail-in ballot on October 3. Kim Fladhammer, chief of staff for the clerk's office, confirmed the request to NBC News, and the Chicago Sun-Times first reported the story.
As of Thursday, the clerk's office said the completed ballot had not yet arrived in Joliet, the Will County seat. That is no surprise: the ballot must travel from Vatican City to Illinois before it can be counted. The Vatican's announcement said the ballot had been submitted; the county's account simply reflects that it was still in transit.
Illinois law made the whole exercise possible. The state dropped its excuse requirement for mail voting in 2010, so any registered Illinois voter can vote by mail, wherever they happen to live. "Any Illinois registered voter can vote by mail," Matt Dietrich, a spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, told the Sun-Times. Leo's case is unusual only in the address on the envelope.
What Was on the Ballot
The pope's ballot carried the same races facing every other Will County voter on November 3, an election that will decide control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's term. At the top of the Illinois ticket is the governor's race, where Democratic Governor JB Pritzker is seeking a third term against Republican nominee Darren Bailey, with Collin Corbett running as an independent.
The ballot also includes the open United States Senate seat being vacated by Dick Durbin, who has held it since 1997. Democrats are backing Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton for the seat, while Republicans are backing Don Tracy, a former state party chairman. House seats are on the ballot as well.
How Leo voted in those races is, and will remain, private. The Vatican did not say which candidates he chose, and the secrecy of the ballot applies to the pope as it does to any other voter. News reports have noted that his public voting record shows he has requested both Democratic and Republican primary ballots over the years. In Illinois, voters choose a party ballot in a primary, but doing so does not make them permanent members of that party, and it reveals nothing about how they vote in a general election.
A Lifelong Voter
What makes this vote historic is not just that a pope voted, but that the man who became pope was already a habitual voter long before the conclave chose him in May 2025. According to voting records cited in news reports, Leo has voted in almost every general election since 2000, including the 2024 presidential election, and he kept voting while he lived and worked in Peru.
He sat out Illinois' March 2026 primary, which makes the midterm ballot the first election he has voted in since becoming pope. The Vatican's statement stressed continuity rather than novelty: he voted, it said, whenever he was eligible, before his election and after it.
That framing matters. The Vatican has presented the vote as a duty and a right of citizenship, not as an endorsement of any candidate or party, and the office Leo holds is expected to stand above partisan politics even as the citizen he remains takes part in them.
What This Means
The image of a pope mailing a ballot is, on its face, a curiosity. But it also captures something real about this particular pontiff. Leo is the first American-born pope in the nearly 2,000-year history of the papacy, and his American identity has followed him into office in ways his predecessors' nationalities never could. No earlier pope was a citizen of a democracy with mail-in ballots and a voter file in a county clerk's office.
For American Catholics, the moment lands days before an election in which their votes will help decide the balance of power in Washington. Nearly 48 million Americans had already cast early ballots before the weekend, according to election trackers, and Illinois is one of the states where control of the Senate and the House will be shaped by who turns out on Tuesday.
The vote also tests an unwritten boundary. Popes are heads of state and moral authorities to Catholics around the world, and, by tradition, figures who avoid even the appearance of partisan alignment. Leo's ballot does not cross that line: it is secret, it was cast as a citizen, and the Vatican disclosed it only as a matter of civic participation. But it does establish a precedent. Future popes who hold another citizenship may now be expected to answer the same question: will they vote, too?
What Happens Next
The immediate question is procedural. The pope's ballot must reach Will County election officials to be counted, and Illinois voters head to the polls on Tuesday, November 3. The clerk's office will process the ballot like any other mail-in ballot from a registered voter in New Lenox.
Beyond that, the story is likely to fade into the footnotes of an already extraordinary papacy, remembered as the election in which the first American pope did something no pope had done before: he voted. The Vatican has said nothing more about the ballot, and there is no reason to expect it will. The choices on it belong to Robert Prevost, citizen of Illinois, and they will stay that way.
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