Voting set to begin for August elections in South Florida

By week’s end, hundreds of thousands of thousands of South Florida voters can begin voting by mail in the Aug. 18 primary contests and nonpartisan elections for School Board and judge.

With much more public interest in voting by mail in an era of coronavirus, and elections officials in South Florida promoting it as an alternative to in-person voting, supervisors of elections in Broward and Palm Beach counties are sending out far more ballots than in the 2016 primaries and nonpartisan elections.

On Thursday, the first day ballots may go out to the general public, the Broward elections office plans to send about 250,000 ballots — almost 60% more than went out for the entire 2016 primary up until voting day.

With a stream of new mail ballot requests coming in, the Broward elections office expects to send another 55,000 to 60,000 mail

ballots in subsequent days.

The Palm Beach County elections office is sending out about 285,000 ballots on Thursday — more than twoand-a-half times the number for the 2016 primary.

Miami-Dade County will mail out 350,000 mail ballots on July 16. That’s an increase of some 46% from 2016.

State law spells out the dates. Thursday is the first day for the initial mailing of ballots; July 16 is the last day for the first batch of ballots. Mail ballots to military and overseas voters were sent last week, as required by state law.

Voting by mail has been gaining popularity since Florida expanded it in the aftermath of the 2000 George W. Bush-Al Gore presidential election, when what used to be called absentee voting was opened to anyone who wished to use it without having to cite a reason.

It’s undergoing a nationwide surge of interest in 2020 because of the coronavirus, which is prompting many to opt for voting from home, via mail, instead of going to in-person early voting centers or neighborhood polling places on Election Day.

Broward Supervisor of Elections Peter Antonacci and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link sent mail-ballot-request forms to all their counties’ registered voters who hadn’t already had requests on file.

As of Monday, the mailer had generated more than 80,000 new requests for absentee ballots, said Antonacci, who termed the response “robust.” He said another 20,000 could come in for the primary.

In Palm Beach County, Link said, about as many as 2,500 requests have come in every day, but some duplicate requests, with people responding both to the mailer and to sign-up efforts run by various political and civic organizations.

Mail ballots must be back at the Supervisor of Elections Office in voter’s county by 7 p.m. on Election Day, which is Aug. 18. Postmarks don’t count.