As election day rapidly approaches, Miami-Dade county is already at a 42 percent voter turnout, a historical high.
On Monday, Christina White, supervisor of elections, said there are a record number of people taking advantage of early voting and vote-by-mail in the county. Early voting ends Sunday, Nov 1.
"If you're somebody who still has your vote-by-mail ballot sitting on your kitchen table, go ahead and get that in to us," she said.
The deadline for returning a mail-in ballot is 7 on election night, but turning it in earlier allows time for any errors to be fixed and make sure your vote is counted.
For those choosing to vote in person, White said the earlier the better, as lines tend to get heavier each day, the heaviest usually being Saturday and Sunday. Wait times for polling locations are listed online here, and are updated every hour.
"You may drive an extra 5 minutes, but if you're going to have a very quick voting experience it will definitely be worth it," White said.
Currently the busiest voting sites are the North Dade Regional Library, the Westchester Library, and the South-Dade Regional Library.
Although COVID-19 has changed much of the usual voting process, there is no shortage of poll workers ready to help.
"The same enthusiasm voters are feeling, our poll workers are feeling as well," she said. "We feel staffed going in, but should we need to go into our standby poll we do have those available."
White said a typical presidential election in the county has a voter turnout of about 70 to 72 percent, but they are projecting a higher turnout of around 80 percent this year.
So far in Miami-Dade, 266,563 people have voted early, and 390,198 people voted by mail, according to Florida's Division of Elections.
