Florida voters already casting their midterm election ballots. Guide to voting-by-mail.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — There’s still plenty of campaigning and mudslinging to come, and Election Day for the 2026 midterms is more than a month away, but about 100,000 Floridians have cast their ballots in the past few days.

Supervisors of elections report interest in mail voting has declined since the midterm elections four years ago, the last time Florida voters were voting for governor and U.S. Senate.

One area stands out: Broward County, where many voters haven’t requested mail ballots or returned them. Broward voting so far is lower than the statewide average. Earlier this year, Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott had predicted mail voting would be down.

But he said in a statement Friday that it would likely improve. “We are still very early in the election process, and some voters may be taking time to research the candidates and ballot questions before making their final selections and returning their ballots.”

In the coming days, Scott said, “Voters will receive additional information from our office about the upcoming election, including early voting locations, dates and hours. We will also increase our outreach to encourage voters to complete and return their vote-by-mail ballots early.”

It’s the opposite in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Both have higher percentages of votes cast than statewide.

Florida has three kinds of voting: mail balloting, which is already underway; in-person early voting, which runs from Oct. 19-Nov. 1 in the three South Florida counties; and in-person voting at neighborhood polling stations on Election Day on Nov. 3.

“Get out and vote,” Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link said at a September news conference with Scott and Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia.

“The more people who are voting, whoever it is you’re voting for, we’re going to have a better democracy when more people are participating,” Link said.

People who want to vote by mail still have time to request mail ballots, and time to return them. And people are doing so.

Data posted Friday morning by the state Division of Elections showed Broward voters had returned 7,263 ballots by the end of the day Thursday. By 6 p.m. Friday, the Supervisor of Elections Office dashboard showed 10,646 ballots had been cast, an increase of 3,383 during the day.

As of Friday evening, Scott’s office reported, 6.8% of mail ballots sent out so far had been returned.

—The numbers

The county-by-county numbers posted early Friday by the state shows Broward has some catching up to do. The numbers include ballots mailed to voters by each county supervisor of elections office and how many have been returned. A separate part of the Elections Division website shows the number of registered voters in each county.

Statewide: 13.58 million registered voters; 2.07 million mail ballots requested and not yet returned; 96,171 returned.

That works out to 0.71% of Florida registered voters casting ballots as of Thursday night.

Broward County: 1.1 million registered voters; 146,933 mail ballots requested and not yet returned; 7,263 returned.

That works out to 0.66% of Broward’s registered voters casting ballots as of Friday morning.

Palm Beach County: 882,000 registered voters; 153,456 mail ballots requested and not yet returned; 10,115 returned.

That works out to 1.15% of Palm Beach County’s registered voters casting ballots so far.

Miami-Dade County: 1.3 million registered voters; 201,805 mail ballots requested and not yet returned; 19,024 returned.

That works out to 1.47% of Miami-Dade County voters casting ballots so far.

The three South Florida counties mailed their first big tranches of mail ballots at about the same time. Broward and Miami-Dade counties sent them to voters on Sept. 24. Palm Beach County did so on Sept. 25. Many people got them in their mail within two days.

—Trends

Mail voting has grown steadily in popularity since Florida scrapped the old absentee ballot system, in which someone needed a reason such as being out of town on Election Day to get a mail ballot.

The state allowed widespread voting by mail and in-person early voting as part of reforms implemented after the contentious 2000 presidential election.

Now, any registered voter can vote by mail. For most of that time Republicans were much bigger users of vote-by-mail ballots, and it became one of the party’s most potent weapons as it increased its dominance of statewide offices, congressional districts and in the Legislature.

Usage ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic when many voters turned to vote by mail so they could avoid congregating with others at in-person voting, especially among Democrats, who polls showed were more concerned with COVID-19 and social distancing than Republicans.

President Donald Trump also discouraged voting-by-mail, starting in his first term, when he started claiming it was rife with fraud. Trump didn’t produce evidence to support his claims, and he frequently votes by mail himself. But he had an influence: Republican use of vote by mail has been decreasing.

As Trump fueled Republican voters’ concerns, Republicans who control state government tightened Florida’s rules for voting by mail — people need to request mail ballots for each two-year election cycle instead of every four years, for example.

And, with COVID-19 no longer the kind of threat it was in 2020, fewer people see a need to stay away from in-person early voting or in-person Election Day voting.

“One thing that’s important to note, the last midterm was sort of coming right out of COVID, and also there’s been significant changes in Florida law around vote by mail,” Scott said. “Yes, it’s down quite a bit, but just to put that into context, it has become more difficult to vote by mail in Florida. And also during COVID, I think we saw a big bump of people who didn’t want to vote in person, and that has now fallen back to where people prefer to vote in person.”

“Ours is down as well, very much for the same reasons,” Link said. Garcia echoed her colleagues: “Our vote by mail is also less, and it’s for the same reason. A lot of people voted by mail during COVID because they didn’t want to come in.”

All three supervisors of elections said they expect more people to use in-person early voting. Broward will offer early voting at 30 sites, and Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties will each have 28 locations.

—Reliability

Link and Scott, who are Democrats, and Garcia, a Republican, said voters in the three South Florida counties can be confident that mail voting is safe and secure.

“Oftentimes, when the president has spoken about vote-by-mail ballot, he’s actually mentioned that … he actually believes that Florida does it right, and I think most of the country actually sees Florida as being that gold standard of exactly how folks would like to see the entire country conduct vote by mail,” Scott said at the news conference with his colleagues.

“Your vote-by-mail ballot will be received, and it will be counted,” he said.

Link said Florida’s system allows only for sending mail ballots to people who request them. She said names, addresses, dates of birth, identification are all checked and she said the signatures on mail ballots are checked. She said there is no spot checking, each application and ballot envelope is reviewed, “so vote-by-mail voting is very safe in Florida.”

And Garcia said, people can check each elections office website to follow the status of their ballots and if there are signature issues, the offices notify the affected voter immediately so they can fix the problem.

—What to know

Because of changes in Florida election law, some people who may expect mail ballots won’t receive them because their previous requests expired.

There is still time to request a mail ballot. The deadline is 5 p.m. Oct. 22.

Voters who have renewed or replaced their driver’s license or state ID since July 31, 2024 — when the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles state began implementing a new law requiring driver’s license and state ID card numbers to include four randomly generated numbers — may need to update their voter registration to ensure the registration record has the most current information on file, Link’s office said.

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 for returning mail ballots. Any ballot not in possession of the supervisor of elections office by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, won’t get tallied.

Postmarks don’t count. Unlike some other states that count late-arriving mail ballots, Florida does not do so. Every election there are ballots that arrive at elections headquarters too late, and they aren’t counted.

That has led election officials to urge people not to wait too long to return their mail ballots to avoid potential postal delays.

One reason to allow plenty of time: Some ballots have farther to travel than many people realize, even if they’re not sent in from distant locations. Broward’s ballots, for example, travel to Miami-Dade County before they make their way back to the Supervisor of Elections Office headquarters in Fort Lauderdale.

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 of sorting Broward’s mail to Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center in Opa-locka.

Elections supervisors also offer drop boxes for mail ballots at early voting centers, once early voting begins, and at their offices. (To assuage voters’ concerns about ballot security after Trump first started raising alarms, Florida changed the name of drop boxes to “secure ballot intake stations,” limited the hours and required a monitor at all times.)

Elections officials advise voters to follow the directions closely, including filling in the ovals and not making stray marks, and signing the ballot envelope where required.

Someone who requests and receives a mail ballot is not required to use it. Voters can still use in-person early voting or vote in their neighborhood polling stations on Election Day. Safeguards are in place to prevent someone from voting more than once.

One election deadline is imminent: The deadline to register to vote is Monday, Oct. 5, at 5 p.m.

—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.

Miami-Dade County: votemiamidade.gov, 305-499-8683.