Voters who are among the 96% of Floridians that the polls show have made up their minds between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump can start voting.
It’s already begun for more than 400,000 people in Broward and Palm Beach counties who’ve requested vote-by-mail ballots.
On Tuesday — exactly five weeks before Election Day, Nov. 5 — Broward County sent out 241,000 mail ballots. Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said many people would receive them Wednesday and Thursday.
Showing the sometimes unpredictable nature of the Postal Service, officials said some South Broward voters could receive their ballots on Tuesday, depending on where they live and when they get their mail.
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link’s office sent out 190,000 ballots on Friday, and they started arriving in mailboxes on Saturday.
Mail voting decline
Both counties will continue sending out mail ballots as requests come in. Scott said his office has about 24,000 more requests, and ballots for those people will go out soon.
The initial mailings, Friday in Palm Beach County and Tuesday in Broward, are timed according to state law, which requires each county elections supervisor to send the initial batch of mail ballots in a one-week period ending Thursday.
Under federal law, elections supervisors had a Sept. 21 deadline to send ballots to voters living overseas and active duty military servicemembers and their families.
Public interest in mail voting is down significantly from the 2020 presidential election.
Scott said the main reason appears to be a falloff from the enormous increase in mail voting that took place in 2020.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is what drove a lot of people to vote by mail in 2020,” Scott said, adding that people are returning to their pre-pandemic preference of voting in person.
In Broward, 203,134 people voted by mail during the 2016 presidential election, a number that soared to 474,404 in 2020. The number of requests the county has so far — 265,000, including the ballots that went in the mail on Tuesday — isn’t the final number for 2024.
In Palm Beach County, the number of vote by mail ballots went from 152,336 in 2016 to 387,830 in 2022.
Another reason for the decline could be additional restrictions the state placed on mail ballot requests, Scott said.
All requests through the 2022 gubernatorial election were canceled, and anyone who wants to receive a mail ballot for this year had to file a new request with some additional information required. There’s still time to do so; the deadline is Oct. 24.
One result of the decline in mail voting, Scott said, is that neighborhood polling stations on Election Day could be more crowded than they’ve been during recent elections.
Scott suggested they “either vote by mail or vote early to avoid the lines. We’re expecting a lot of enthusiasm once we get close to the last day and that there’s likely to be a large number of folks coming out to vote on Election Day.
“So for people who want to be able to get in and get out quickly, definitely look to vote-by-mail/vote from home and avoid all the craziness that you might encounter at a polling place. Or go to an early voting site, where you have the flexibility to go to whichever site is most convenient anywhere in Broward County.”
Logistics
The logistics of getting the mail ballots from the work area in which they were prepared at the Broward elections headquarters in Fort Lauderdale to the Postal Service sorting center in Opa-locka involved lots of people and equipment.
- 2,286 tubs of ballots.
- 97 metal dollies to hold the tubs.
- 3 U.S. Postal Service semi-trucks.
- 4 Florida Highway Patrol troopers in two patrol cars. State troopers, not Broward sheriff’s deputies, are used because the trucks carrying the ballots cross the Broward/Miami-Dade county line.
Broward’s ballots are handled at the Postal Service’s Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center in Opa-locka.
In 2012, as part of a nationwide cost-cutting move, the Postal Service closed the mail processing centers in Fort Lauderdale and Pembroke Pines and shifted the work sorting Broward’s mail to the Opa-locka center.
That location is the reason why a small number of South Broward voters could find ballots in other mailboxes Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
Returning ballots
Even though Election Day is weeks away, people who want to vote by mail should be cognizant of the calendar and not wait too long to return their ballots.
Florida has a strict deadline: 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5. Any ballot not in possession of the supervisor of elections office won’t get tallied.
Postmarks don’t count. In every election, ballots go uncounted because they arrived too late, in some cases more than enough to change the outcome in some races.
“We can’t give a date that you’re guaranteed that your ballot is guaranteed to come in,” Scott said. “Once you get down within say five days or so, it’s probably too late to put it in the mail.”
The Palm Beach County mail voting instructions state that “If you plan to mail your ballot back to us, you should allow at least one week for your ballot to reach our office.”
U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, in a Sept. 19 news briefing, recommended people return their ballots slightly earlier: at least one week before Election Day.
“We encourage the voting public to mail early, if they choose to vote by mail, and to put their return ballot back in the mail at least seven days before it must be back to their election official under the laws of the state where they are voting. That’s the key to everyone’s success,” DeJoy said.
He said the Postal Service would make “heroic efforts to beat the clock” to deliver mail ballots on time.
An extra 10 days are allowed for military and overseas ballots to be returned and still get counted.
There are other places where Florida voters can return their vote-by-mail ballots.
Drop boxes are available at early voting centers once early voting begins. (Bowing to skepticism about mail voting, Republicans who control the state Legislature changed the name of drop boxes to “secure ballot intake station.”)
People can also return them to county elections offices.
Key dates
Deadline to register to vote: Oct. 7.
Deadline to request a mail ballot: Oct. 24.
In-person early voting: Oct. 21-Nov. 3 (in Broward and Palm Beach counties).
Election Day: Nov. 5.
Information
People can check to see if they’re registered to vote, request mail ballots and check their status, and find locations of polling places online and by phone.
Broward County: www.browardvotes.gov, 954-357-8683.
Palm Beach County: www.votepalmbeach.gov, 561-656-6200.
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