Alachua County is offering a way to skip long lines on voting day.
The deadline to request a mailed ballot for the Presidential Preference Primary Election is 5 p.m. Saturday, said Michael Bruckman, the vote-by-mail coordinator for the Alachua Supervisor of Elections office.
The official election day is March 17, but the election’s office is encouraging voters to vote earlier than that by voting early or voting by mail, Bruckman said. In the upcoming ballot, voters will decide on the president in a closed-primary, where voters can only vote for their registered party. Voters will also decide on some Gainesville city commissioners.
Alachua residents registered in the county can request to vote by mail through calling the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections office, filling out an online form or getting a physical form from the office, said TJ Pyche, the office’s spokesperson. Those registered outside the county must call their county Supervisor of Elections office.
Vote by mail ballots must be mailed back or driven to the Supervisor of Elections office by 7 p.m. March 17, Pyche said.
Bruckman said voting by mail is a convenient option for voters to save time, get the ballot early to take the time to make a better decision for them and to return the ballot with postage paid for by the county.
Vote-by-mail ballot requests can be made for up to two general elections every two years, which includes the presidential and the midterm elections, and the residents who do sign up for the request will get the ballots five weeks prior to every election, Bruckman said.
Bruckman said he recommends voters either vote early or vote-by-mail to avoid irregularities on Election Day, such as updating addresses if it wasn’t previously done so. It is more complicated to fix that information on election day and it is better to address it earlier, he said.
As of Thursday morning, more than 23,000 voters have signed up for vote-by-mail ballots, Bruckman said. This is a significant amount compared to 2016 when only 14,509 people voted by mail or absentee.
If voters want to vote early in-person, residents must go to one of the six early voting centers from March 6 to March 14 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those voting centers are the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections office, the Tower Road Branch Library, the Millhopper Branch Library, Legacy Park Multipurpose Center, Orange Heights Baptist Church and the Reitz Union.
Contact Stephany Matat at smatat@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @StephanyMatat.
Nestor Garcia, a 21-year-old industrial engineer major, attends the early voting session on Oct. 22, 2018, at the J. Wayne Reitz Union to vote for the first time.
