ORLANDO, Fla. — Orange County election officials are preparing more than 260 polling locations ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.
Supervisor of Elections Karen Castor Dentel said preparations include getting tables, chairs, ballots, voting stickers and tabulation machines to polling sites across the county.
She said that the work to prepare for an election begins long before voters arrive at the polls.
“We have been working on this for over a year,” Castor Dentel said. “We have to contact all the locations for the polling places and have contracts with each of them. We start recruiting our employees who work on Election Day, and then we do a training session for all of them. So, it is months and months. I mean, it’s a good year, I would say, of preparation.”
There are several polling place changes this year, according to the Supervisor of Elections Office. Some involve name changes, while others are permanent location changes.
Orange County has more than 808,000 registered voters, and with midterm elections historically seeing low turnout, Castor Dentel said she expected less than a quarter of them to vote on Tuesday.
“The total number of registered voters varies a little bit from year to year,” she said. “But in the midterm election in 2022, we had 22% turnout during the primary. And then in 2024, two years ago, it was a 17% turnout. So we’re expecting anywhere between 17 and 22%.”
Castor Dentel advised voters to know who they plan to vote for before arriving and said voters with mail-in ballots can bring them in person.
Orange County voters can find their polling place information by visiting the Orange County Supervisor of Elections website.