Orange County voters have 10 days remaining to request a vote-by-mail ballot for the 2024 election

Voters in Orange County, Florida, have 10 days left to request a vote-by-mail ballot for the 2024 General Election, which will see voters decide on issues such as abortion rights and marijuana legalization in addition to the election of local, state and federal candidates for elected office.

According to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office, the deadline for requesting a vote-by-mail ballot for the 2024 General Election is Oct. 24, 2024.

Other options for voting this election cycle include voting early at an Early Voting location or voting at your designated polling location on General Election Day, Nov. 5.

Early voting will begin Monday, Oct. 21, and last through Sunday, Nov. 3. Sites are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

The registration deadline for new voters this election has already passed (despite efforts by advocates to extend it, due to recent hurricanes), but if you are a registered voter who would like to request a mail ballot, you should aim to do so as soon as possible.

As a result of a new elections law, all vote-by-mail ballot requests in Florida submitted before the start of 2023 have officially expired. So if you haven’t submitted a request for a mail ballot since the start of the 2023, you will need to do so again.

You can check to see if you are registered to receive a mail ballot here.

If you live in Orange County, you can receive a vote-by-mail ballot by:

• Requesting a vote-by-mail ballot online
• Calling the Supervisor of Elections Office at 407-836-8683
• Mailing a filled-out vote-by-mail request form to the Supervisor of Elections Office (in English here, or Spanish here) to P.O. Box 562001, Orlando, FL 32856-2001
• Faxing a filled-out vote-by-mail request form to 407-254-6577

Once you’ve received your ballot, you can drop that ballot off in the mail, drop it off at the Supervisor of Elections Office, or drop it off at an Early Voting location any time during early voting hours, once those locations open up on Oct. 21.

If you do decide to drop your ballot off in the mail this year, it’s important to do so as soon as possible. As The Guardian reports, elections officials across the country, including the president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, recently warned that, due to persistent and unaddressed deficiencies, they’ve seen delays in the national mail system that threaten to disenfranchise voters, even those who mail their ballots back on time.

According to a Sept. 11 letter sent by the National Association of Secretaries of States and National Association of State Election Directors to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, “election officials in multiple states report receiving anywhere from dozens to hundreds of ballots 10 or more days after postmark,” which is well outside USPS’ standard delivery window of three to five days.

“We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service,” the letter, signed by Florida Supervisors of Elections president Travis Hart, continues. “Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump administration appointee who has been criticized for his cost-cutting USPS consolidation plan, recently told lawmakers during a Sept. 26 hearing that more than 99 percent of ballots are delivered within seven days, according to the USA Today Network. He’s pushed back against concerns voiced by local and state elections officials about USPS’ ability to deliver ballots and postmark them on-time. “We engage in heroic efforts to beat the clock,” DeJoy recently told reporters.

In Orange County, ballots must be received by the Supervisor of Elections Office by 7 p.m. on Election Day (Tuesday, Nov. 5) for those ballots to be tallied and counted. Postmarks are irrelevant, according to the office’s website, and will not count.

According to the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office, as it stands today, there are currently nearly 144,000 standing requests for a vote-by-mail ballot in Orange County, compared to the 214,332 requests to vote by mail that the office had for the 2022 General Election.

All in all, Orange County has 833,949 active registered voters, including 331,845 (or 39 percent) registered Democrats, 223,849 (26.8 percent) registered Republicans, 252,200 (30 percent) registered No Party Affiliated voters, and 26,055 (3 percent) registered with other parties.

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This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.