ORLANDO, Fla. – If you’re one of the more than 3.5 million Florida voters who plan to vote by mail or have already voted, you (hopefully!) know you’re supposed to sign the ballot envelope before you return it to the county supervisor of elections office.
What happens if that signature doesn’t match the signature in county records? Voters in Florida have a chance to fix the problem. It’s called curing your ballot.
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Florida requires everyone who votes by mail to sign the envelope the ballot used to return it to the county elections office. That signature is matched to whatever signature the office has on file as a form of verifying the authenticity of the voter.
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Signatures change over time as voters age. They may have health issues that can change signatures too. Plus, there is the issue of cursive vs. printing, especially with younger voters, election officials say. These things are taken into account when looking at a signature.
If the signature is missing or does not match the one on record, the elections office mails the voter a cure affidavit and also contacts them using whatever information is on file, including a phone call or an email.
Voters can also get vote-by-mail updates through their supervisor of elections website. If they look up their voter info, they can learn if their ballot has been mailed and if the elections office received it.
Most Central Florida counties also offer BallotTrax. This program, which voters can sign up to use, can let them know more details about their vote-by-mail ballot, including whether it was rejected. Flagler, Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties utilize BallotTrax.
If a voter needs to cure their ballot, they need to sign the cure affidavit and provide a copy of an approved form of voter identification and send it back to the county elections office. The office must receive the affidavit by 5 p.m. on the Thursday after the election (Nov. 7), otherwise the vote will not count.
The affidavit also requires the person to affirm that they are a qualified voter who is registered in the county and that they have not voted more than once. Here is what the cure affidavit looks like in Orange County, for instance.
If you have a vote-by-mail ballot to be sent in, getting those in as soon as possible will better ensure your vote counts. You can drop it in the mail, you can go to an early voting location and put it in a Secure Ballot Intake Station or you can deliver it to the county supervisor of elections office yourself.
If you still have your vote-by-mail ballot on Election Day and can’t take it to the supervisor of elections office by 7 p.m. that night (Tuesday, Nov. 5), this is what you do:
- Go to your assigned polling precinct
- Surrender your vote-by-mail ballot
- You should be given a regular paper ballot to cast your vote
Have more questions about voting by mail? We answer them HERE.
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