Florida Election Chiefs Tell Voters to Skip the Mail as Ballots Take Up to Two Weeks

Election officials in several Florida counties are telling voters not to trust the Postal Service with their ballots after reports of mail ballots taking up to two weeks to arrive.

Florida requires vote-by-mail ballots to reach county election offices by 7 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, with an exception for overseas ballots. A postmark before Election Day is not enough for a ballot to count.

“We’ve seen where people, even locally in Broward County, have mailed a ballot and it’s taken up to two weeks for that ballot to get here, which is totally unacceptable,” Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said.

Scott said delays are hitting ballots going out and coming back. “My son in Orlando took 12 days,” he told CBS Miami. “Take it in person, because there is a chance it won’t reach us.”

In Seminole County, Supervisor of Elections Amy Pennock said her office has issued more than 500 replacement ballots for voters who never received theirs and fields at least 20 calls a day about ballot status.

“The other day, we dealt with a requester who it took them seven days to receive a vote-by-mail ballot that was mailed from my office here in Sanford to their house here in Sanford,” Pennock said.

“If you have your ballot, don’t put it in the post office,” Pennock told WESH. “Drop it off to one of our secure ballot intake stations at early voting locations or here at our office.”

What Voters Can Do

Voters who already have a ballot can hand-deliver it to a county election office or a secure intake station at an early voting site. Those still waiting for one can vote early or in person on Tuesday.

In Monroe County, home to Key West, about 100 voters have reported delays. One voter told the Keys Weekly that ballots he and his wife mailed from Ohio on Oct. 2 had not arrived 17 days later.

Monroe Supervisor of Elections Sherri Hodies said some ballots mailed from other states in early October reached Miami on Oct. 24 and Key West two days later. Her office is sending replacement ballots to voters who need them.

The Postal Service said local management reports no delays at its facilities serving Broward, Monroe or Seminole counties and that it cannot comment further without reviewing the specific mailpieces involved.

“There are any number of factors that may impact the timeliness of a mailpiece,” a USPS spokesperson said. The agency recommends mailing ballots at least one week before they must be received.

The problems are not statewide. Miami-Dade officials reported no delivery issues, with about 120,000 of 250,000 mailed ballots already returned, and several Central Florida counties said they were not seeing delays.

More than 1.7 million Floridians had already returned vote-by-mail ballots for Tuesday’s election, most of them trusting the Postal Service to get them there in time.

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