ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 About three months ahead of crucial midterm elections, requests for vote-by-mail ballots are substantially lagging 2024 totals, three local supervisors of elections said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Under a Florida law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, requests for such ballots expire at the end of a presidential election cycle and a new request must be submitted to vote by mail in subsequent elections.<\/p>\n
In Orange County, about 175,000 ballots were mailed out to voters in 2024, with requests for this year\u2019s midterm elections \u2014 which start with primaries on Aug. 18 \u2014 at about one-third of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as requests, we\u2019re at about 60,000 requests for this upcoming midterm, so we have a long way to go,\u201d said elections supervisor Karen Castor Dentel.<\/p>\n
Similar figures were reported by Seminole County Supervisor Amy Pennock and Osceola Supervisor Mary Jane Arrington. The three held a panel discussion on the upcoming midterms Wednesday.<\/p>\n
If requests for the popular voting-by-mail option are down, overall voter turnout may be as well this year, though Florida voters have plenty of races to weigh in on in 2026, with candidates for governor, the U.S. Senate, the state Legislature and a host of local offices among those on the ballot.<\/p>\n
Arrington said Osceola has under 20,000 active requests for mail ballots and sent more than 60,000 to voters two years ago. The office is sending a reminder to voters in the mail this week as part of a series of communications hoping to bolster the total in coming months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sorry,\u201d she said of the figure. \u201cWe have to pay attention and do better.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Seminole\u2019s total remains about half of that in 2024, it doubled its number of requests in recent weeks after a push to contact voters, Pennock said. Roughly 30,000 requests have been submitted, compared with about 60,000 two years ago.<\/p>\n
The supervisors said voters like the mail option because it is convenient, giving residents a way to vote if they face transportation concerns, need to travel or have emergencies near Election Day.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump wants to curb mail-in-voting nationwide, saying it means \u201cmail-in cheating\u201d and regularly attacking the practice. Trump, however, mailed in his ballot for a special Florida election in March. That was for a seat in the Florida House, representing a district that includes his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. He told The New York Times he voted by mail \u201cbecause I couldn\u2019t be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The practice is widely seen as secure, with the Brookings Institute finding in 2025 that mail voter fraud accounted for four cases out of every 10 million ballots cast.<\/p>\n
A Florida voter can request such a ballot for themselves or an immediate family member by going to their local supervisor of election\u2019s website, calling the office, or visiting in person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 About three months ahead of crucial midterm elections, requests for vote-by-mail ballots are substantially lagging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1618,28,30,29,15880,44361,113533],"class_list":["post-263095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-fla","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-mail","tag-midterm-elections","tag-supervisor-amy-pennock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}