ORLANDO, Fla.\u2014 Central Florida residents that want to vote early but have not yet still have about a week to participate in early voting, with all counties in the area now offering it.<\/p>\n
Voters need to bring a valid photo ID, like a driver\u2019s license or state identification card.<\/p>\n
Early voting is expected to end on Saturday or Sunday, depending on the county. Election Day on November 3.<\/p>\n
According to the University of Florida Election Lab, more than 2.5 million Floridians have already cast their ballots.<\/p>\n
In Orange County alone, more than 14,000 people showed up to the polls on Saturday, according to county election officials.<\/p>\n
In total, Orange County has seen nearly 147,000 early voters flock to the polls, officials said.<\/p>\n
Supervisor of Elections Karen Castor Dentel said voter numbers are averaging around 13,000 a day. She said this is nearly double the turnout seen in the 2022 midterm elections for early voting.<\/p>\n
Since early voting began on October 19, that first Monday had the highest turnout, totaling over 19,700 early voters. Friday saw just over 18,000.<\/p>\n
Those numbers include mail in ballots as well.<\/p>\n
Castor Dentel said she can tell many voters have done their research, with many bringing their sample ballots in ready to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey come in, they just bring their sample ballot with all the answers,\u201d Castor Dentel said. \u201cIt\u2019s like an open-book test, and they are easily and quickly filling out their actual ballots, and I think that\u2019s really helped reduce any long lines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Out of their 27 voting locations, Castor Dentel said the busiest polling place across the board is the Apopka Community Center.<\/p>\n
But lines have remained flowing.<\/p>\n
For Orange County, the deadline to request a mail-in ballot has passed, so Castor Dentel said if you haven\u2019t requested one, you should plan to vote in person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla.\u2014 Central Florida residents that want to vote early but have not yet still have about a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[274,770,28,30,29,2287,171178,115,1335,139,278,835],"class_list":["post-437631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-app-top-stories","tag-community-news","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-local-politics","tag-maggie-rickerby","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437631","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=437631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}