LAKE COUNTY, Fla. – Early voting wraps up Saturday in several Central Florida counties Saturday, including in Lake County.
Voters, like Cassie Johnstone, started lining up before the elections office opened Saturday morning.
“We got out here at about 9:30 and as soon as 10 o’clock hit they opened the doors and started getting people in line,” Johnstone said.
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She said she was in and out of the office in about 10 minutes. She adds she wanted to vote on the last day of early voting to avoid the crowds on Election Day.
“Just so I can beat the rush on election day and I also work during the week so I wanted to get out while I could still vote and not wait an hour in line,” she said.
Lake County Supervisor of Elections Alan Hays said they are already seeing large voter turnout before Tuesday.
He said 56% of the county’s registered voters already cast their ballots in person or by mail.
“we’ve had almost 85,000 in-person voting early voting and then we’ve had over 63,000 mail ballots that we’ve received already,” Hays said.
Hays said he is not surprised by these numbers but pleased.
“Everybody leading up to this election knew it was going to be a highly contentious race, it’s going to be a high turnout,” he said.
Early voting is also ending on Saturday in Brevard, Marion, Flagler, and Sumter counties. Voters in the remaining Central Florida counties have until Sunday to cast their ballots early.
Hays said that even though early voting is ending this weekend, they still have a lot of work left to do.
“Our teams will begin to bring a lot of the equipment back in here. We’ll get the last-minute equipment deployed to the various polling places and we will be ready Tuesday morning at 7 o’clock to start processing voters,” Hays said.
Hays said it is too late to mail in your vote by mail ballots. He said you cannot drop off your vote by mail ballot at your polling place on Election Day, but you can turn it over and cast a ballot in person at your precinct. He adds you can return your vote by mail ballot at the drop-off location at the Supervisor of Elections Office by 7 p.m. on election night and it will be counted.