By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
In Summary:
Florida supervisors of elections are mailing vote-by-mail ballots ahead of the August 18 primary election, while reminding voters that requests must be submitted by August 6. State law requires voters to renew their vote-by-mail requests every two years, contributing to a decline in mail ballot participation since the change took effect. The deadline to register to vote in the primary is July 20.
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Supervisors of elections throughout Florida have until Thursday to send vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots to domestic voters who have requested them in advance of the August 18 primary elections.
Related: Florida League of Women Voters helps returning citizens restore voting rights.
Mail ballots have already been sent to overseas voters, and so far, 477 have been returned, according to the Florida Division of Elections website.
A 2021 election law requires voters to request mail ballots at the end of each general election year. As of Monday afternoon, more than 1.1 million registered voters have requested vote-by-mail ballots in advance of the August primary, and Democratic voters have made the most requests to date.
So far, 523,083 registered Democratic voters in Florida have requested vote-by-mail ballots, compared to 391,149 registered Republicans. An additional 217,849 Non-Party-Affiliated voters and 25,193 from other political parties have made such requests.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said Monday that since that law went fully into effect, it’s been up to party officials to educate their voters that they need to request vote-by-mail ballots from their local supervisors of elections if that’s how they intend to vote.
“They went after one of the easiest ways for people to exercise their rights to vote, and so since then we have, of course, seen across the state the drop off of vote-by-mail and having to let people know that every two years you have to sign up,” she said on a Zoom conference call.
The deadline to request a vote-by-mail is Thursday, August 6.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March that, in part, directed the U.S. Post Office to transmit mail ballots only to states that submit lists of their mail-in voters to the agency and meet other requirements for their mail-voting programs. A federal judge blocked that order from going nationwide on July 1.
After a notable decline in requests for vote-by-mail ballots for the two special congressional elections held in January and April 2025, Florida election officials recommended to state lawmakers both before and after the 2025 legislative session that the state allow voters to check a box on the return envelopes of their mail ballots, asking that their vote-by-mail ballot requests remain active for the next election.
The Legislature ignored those requests, however.
The deadline to register to vote in the primary is July 20.
Key Points:
- Florida supervisors of elections must mail requested vote-by-mail ballots to domestic voters by Thursday.
- More than 1.1 million Florida voters have already requested mail ballots for the August 18 primary.
- Voters have until August 6 to request a vote-by-mail ballot.
- Florida law requires voters to renew vote-by-mail requests every two years instead of automatically keeping them active.
- The deadline to register to vote in the August 18 primary election is July 20.
