Early voting in Florida: New security measures and key dates for voters

ORLANDO, Fla. — Early voting is underway in 18 states, including in Florida.

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Orange County election officials said the county set a new record for early voting turnout.

County officials said over 18,000 Orange County voters showed up on the first day of early voting on Monday.

At last check, more than 201,000 mail-in ballots have been returned from registered voters in Central Florida.

Those voters can also return their ballots at secure drop boxes outside early voting sites.

Channel 9 learned more about the new voting security and found a slow stream of traffic at the Heart of West Lakes Wellness Center in West Lakes, one of three new polling sites in Orange County.

Read: Nearly all of Central Florida to open early voting sites on Monday

By lunchtime, nearly 6-thousand voters had popped into one of 22 early voting sites.

“Election day is more busy,” Shirley Bolden, an earlier voter, said. “So, early voting, you can avoid a lot of the crowds and long lines.”

Each early voting site also has a black box to drop off vote-by-mail ballots.

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Voters will also notice that two poll workers will monitor the box this year.

Glen Gilzean, the Orange County Supervisor of Elections, said, “So what is new in this particular election cycle is that we’ve asked the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement partners to add additional layers of security to make sure that as live ballots are out, they’re being secure and escorted back to headquarters for tabulation.”

That will happen at the end of each day - or if a box fills up.

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The new monitoring requirements mean you can only drop off a ballot during early voting hours - or at the main supervisor of elections office.

“In order for someone to drop a ballot, they had to sign up to vote by mail,” Gilzean said. “So, they not only signed up for to register to vote, but they additionally had to sign up to receive a vote by mail ballot. In Orange County, we only have 150,000 and we have purposely ID’d each one of those ballots to make sure that no one gets two ballots or no one is being able to put in counterfeit ballots at all.”

If you plan to drop off your ballot at one of the early voting sites, it must be delivered by Nov. 3- the last day of early voting.

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You can also take it to the Supervisor of Elections office on Kaley Street in Orlando.

The last day to request a ballot is Thursday, Oct. 24.

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