DeLand, FL - Over half of Florida's counties are already offering early voting for the November 6th general election, and every one of those who is not will have to do so by tomorrow (October 27th).
Flagler County was one of those who got an early jump, starting it on Monday, and Volusia County will finally join the fray on Saturday.
Volusia Elections Supervisor Lisa Lewis says the county's early voting period runs through next Sunday (November 4th), two days before the general election, and the five early voting sites are the same ones used during the August primary election. Those are in DeLand at the Thomas C. Kelly Administration Center; the Deltona Regional Library; City Island Library in Daytona Beach; the Ormond Beach Regional Library and the New Smyrna Beach Regional Library.
Early voting will be available 12 hours every day from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and you can choose to vote at whichever one you want regardless of where you live, so long as you live in Volusia.
"Midterms are usually 50% to 55% here in Volusia County," Lewis said when asked about overall turnout in this election. "The way the vote by mail is turning out now, I'm hoping we'll get 65%."
She expects over half the turnout, at least, to come through the postal service or through the next nine days of early voting.
As it stands now, Volusia County has a nearly 12% overall voter turnout just with the vote by mail ballots, where 52,716 have already been turned in as of yesterday (October 25th).
In a decidedly purple county, registered Republicans make up the majority of those ballots so far (43%) at 22,712, followed by Democrats (37%) at 19,481 and other parties/no party affiliation at 20% (10,623).
17,505 have voted so far in Flagler, with a nearly equal split between vote by mail (53% - 9,248) and early voting (47% - 8,257).
That comes out to an overall voter turnout of 21%, and in a county dominated by Republicans, Flagler's GOP voters make up the big majority so far (48% - 8,477), followed by Democrats (34% - 5,979) and other parties/no party affiliation (18% - 2,948).
