Still Holding a Mail Ballot in Orange County? Today Is the Last Day to Drop It at an Early Voting Site — and Tuesday's 7 P.M. Deadline Is a Received Deadline

For Orange County voters who requested a mail ballot and have not returned it, the calendar now does the deciding. Through tonight, a completed ballot — enclosed in its official return envelope and signed — can be handed in at the staffed intake stations at any of the county's 27 early voting sites during early-voting hours, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. When early voting ends tonight, that option ends with it: on Election Day, a mail ballot can only be returned to the Supervisor of Elections office itself, and it must be there by 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3.

The rule that catches voters every cycle is the one Florida states plainly: the deadline is a received deadline, not a mailed one. A ballot postmarked on Election Day but arriving after 7 p.m. will not be accepted — state guidance makes the single exception of a 10-day extension for overseas voters in general elections. Voters who decide at this point to vote in person instead can do so on Tuesday at their assigned precinct, where polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and anyone in line by 7 p.m. may vote; the deadline to request a new mail ballot passed on October 22, so no replacement can be mailed now.

One deadline runs past Election Day. A voter whose mail ballot is flagged for a signature problem has until 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 5 to cure it, according to the county's voting guidance — a step that only matters if the ballot itself arrives on time. The practical order for a ballot still sitting on a kitchen counter in Orange County is therefore short: hand it in at an early voting site today, hand it in at the elections office by Tuesday at 7 p.m., or vote in person on Tuesday — but do not trust it to the mail on Monday and assume the postmark protects it. It does not.