Voting sites prepare for Tuesday primary,

Everything is closing in Florida but the polls. And people are voting — just not necessarily in person.

While theme parks, arenas and music festivals are shutting down amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, and the state of Louisiana put off its April 4 election until June, early voting centers around the state will remain open through Sunday ahead of the March 17 primary., state officials reaffirmed Friday.

So far, mail voting is on the uptick. But fewer votes have been cast than at this time during the 2016 presidential primaries due to a significant in-person voting drop-off among Republican voters, who have only nominal choices.

“We are definitely voting,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday. “They voted during the Civil War. We’re going to vote.”

Election chiefs in Florida, Arizona, Illinois and Ohio — all of which hold their primary elections on Tuesday — issued an unusual joint statement Friday stressing that voting remains safe.

“Unlike concerts, sporting events or other mass gatherings where large groups of people travel long distances to congregate in a confined space for an extended period of time, polling locations see people from a nearby community coming into and out of the building for a short duration,” read the statement, which was signed by Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, among others.

The election officials said they “are confident that voters in our states can safely and securely cast their ballots in this election.”

Local election supervisors say they’ve stocked up on hand sanitizer and hand-washing supplies.

And while Florida uses paper ballots, workers are aggressively sanitizing the voting booths and other equipment at early voting centers — which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have encouraged voters to use in order to avoid Election Day lines.

And to protect seniors, who risk the greatest complications if they contract COVID-19, the disease caused by a novel coronavirus infection, the state ordered supervisors this week to shift voting away from precincts at facilities frequented by seniors, such as assisted living facilities and retirement centers.

Broward County had moved a dozen precincts as of Friday. Miami-Dade is keeping six precincts at senior facilities open so that voters who reside in those facilities can vote on-location, but asking all other voters assigned to those precincts to vote at newly assigned locations.

Miami-Dade also had to find new precincts to replace two precincts in Bay Harbor Islands closed off after a town employee who’d had contact with those sites tested positive for COVID-19. Other school-based precincts will remain open despite a decision Friday by MiamiDade County Public Schools to temporarily suspend classes.

Voters who believe they’re ill are being encouraged to send immediate family members to pick up a mail ballot from the supervisor’s office on their behalf, or to print and fill out an affidavit available online that authorizes someone else to pick up the ballot. Supervisors in Broward and Miami-Dade counties said no one had taken advantage of this through early Friday afternoon, but mail ballots can be requested and picked up through Tuesday.

But if you wait until Election Day to request a mail ballot, you’ll need to provide the elections office with a signed affidavit.

Mail ballots can be dropped off in person by anyone (as long as it is done without compensation) and the ballot will be counted as long as it is deposited in a drop box at the same office by the close of polls on election night. Polls close at 7 p.m. unless voters are still in line.

At the Coral Gables Branch Library Friday, Brittany Smith chose to vote early after her classes at Miami Dade College were moved online in response to the pandemic. Smith, a 27-year-old Democrat, said she voted for Bernie Sanders.

“I wanted to avoid the crowds,” Smith said. “I was expecting it to be really busy. That’s why I came so early.”

In Miami-Dade County, nearly 33,000 people had voted at early voting centers through the start of voting Friday, likely relieving the polling places on

Tuesday in what was already expected to be a low-turnout affair. “We do not anticipate long lines on Election Day,” said election spokeswoman Suzy Trutie.

So far, the total number of Floridians voting inperson at early voting centers is down from 2016. More than 450,000 voters had cast ballots at early voting centers through early Friday afternoon, down from about 700,000 in-person early votes cast at this point in 2016, according to Let’s Preserve The American Dream, a political nonprofit that tracks election data and conducts polling in Florida and other states.

That drop-off was due mostly to a steep decline in early voting by Republicans, who are voting in a nominal primary guaranteed to hand Florida’s delegates to President Donald Trump. Mail voting, meanwhile, has increased, likely due to an additional 500,000 mail ballots requested this year over 2016, most of that jump among Democrats.

Still, in Coral Gables Friday, Betsy Warwick said she’s worried the coronavirus outbreak will dampen voting. She changed her plans and voted early after watching the tension around the spread of the coronavirus escalate in recent days.

“I probably would have done it a few days down the road, but because of the virus I moved it up a bit. In the past day or two, you’re starting to feel the tension from the virus,” said Warwick, 68. “There were very few people in there. Which worries me. I’m afraid it will affect things.”