Monday was the first day of early voting for most of Central Florida ahead of the Nov. 3 General Election. Thousands of motivated voters turned out to the polls to cast a ballot after doors opened.
Why vote early?
James Kasik was one of the first voters in line at the Alafaya Library Branch in Orange County. He’s been voting in elections for half a century.
“I very rarely will vote on Election Day because it's just way too tight as far as time goes,” he said. “You never can tell how many people are going to show up, and you'll be standing out until like 9 o'clock at night.”
Kasik also likes the convenience of early voting, which is open on weekends and through the whole workweek. He stopped by after giving blood at a clinic up the road.
Like several early voters Monday morning, Kasik was concerned about the Trump administration.
"I’m a big fan of reading the Constitution,” he said. “I carry a copy of it in my phone, and I’m constantly reading it over. And what’s happening now? Nothing to do with the Constitution. It’s heartbreaking. … I mean, total disregard for the Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment, the 14th Amendment.”
Voting groups are recommending early voting to avoid any lines on election day. That’s why Steve Burbage has been voting early for years.
“The lines are generally not long or anything early, and so it just takes the burden away from me having to come back on Election Day, when there may be kind of chaos and a lot of people in lines,” Burbage said.
That’s the reason Michelle Moise showed up to the early voting site on the University of Central Florida campus with her friend Tawana Destave.
“On the day of, it can be very busy. So if you get your vote in early, at least you know that you're good,” Moise said. “It's like when you're showing up for a job interview or you're showing up for something that's important to you. You show up early so that they know that you're invested in what you want.”
Immigration
Some voters in line Monday morning were hoping to push back against President Trump’s mass deportations.
Central Florida is home to one of the largest communities of Haitian immigrants in the U.S. In June, the Trump administration won a legal challenge allowing it to deport Haitians living here with Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian designation.
Destave is a University of Central Florida senior who’s voting early on campus. She’s seen that uncertainty firsthand.
“I know a lot of families that go through this, and it's like, I have to watch them basically get stripped away from their working privileges and ultimately their houses if they get found,” Destave said.
She referenced reporting that the Department of Homeland Security directed Haitian TPS holders in Ohio to wear ankle monitors after their protection lapsed.
“An ankle monitor. What do you classify that with? Criminality, right?” Destave said. “But for a person who's came to this country not only for education but to live a better life — because we all know Haiti's going through it right now — and they have to wear [an] ankle monitor? That's depressing. You're stripping the human decency. I'm not human at that point. You're treating me like I'm a dog, like I'm a criminal, and that's not the case.”
The numbers
In addition to a U.S. Senate contest and congressional races, Florida voters will choose local leaders and state lawmakers. They’ll decide a major property tax issue and pick the state’s next governor.
As of 8 p.m. on Monday, when early voting locations closed for the day, 50,198 Central Floridians had cast ballots early in person for the midterms. Another 194,352 have already voted by mail.
In Orange County, more votes were cast early at the Alafaya Library than at any other precinct on Monday: a total of 1,192 ballots.
Unlike on Election Day, early voters can vote in person at any early voting location.
Voters can find the locations and times for early voting on the websites for their county supervisor of elections:
Early voting in Marion County opens on Thursday. It starts on Saturday in Sumter County. (Under Florida law, counties don’t have to offer early voting until 10 days before the election, but they can offer it up to 5 days before that.)
Mail-in voting in the Nov. 3 general election has been underway for several weeks now. The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Thursday, Oct. 22.
