Mail-in ballots are starting to going out to Central Florida voters for the August primary, the first major election in the state following the two controversial elections laws passed since 2020.
The coronavirus pandemic drove many voters in Florida to cast ballots by mail instead of in person. Some weren t sure they could trust the state s election system to count their ballots.Even though Florida had a record number of mail ballots in the general election in November, it also had a smaller percentage of those ballots rejected than in the 2016 election.That finding is supported by a new report from the Division Of Elections.In 2016, there were 2.7 million mail ballots cast in the general election. Of those, 1.68% were deemed invalid for a variety of reasons, often because the signature on the envelope was missing or did not match the one on file at elections offices. In 2020, 4.7 million ballots were cast but less than 1% were invalid.“We all saw a reduction in the number of rejected ballots,” Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles said.Cowles says the reason is the cure, the affidavit that can be filled out by the voter to correct mistakes on a vote-by-mai