October 2024
To help your friends vote in the November 5 Election, you can start by understanding the election calendar. Election day is November 5, but a key date for us is October 3, the deadline for the Supervisor of Elections to began mailing ballots to voters who’ve signed up to vote by mail. All of us, and everyone we know, needs to be ready to vote once their mail ballots arrive.
Once the mail ballots arrive, we need to get our like-minded Pinellas voters everything they need to cast their ballots – info about every item on their ballot and the mechanics of submitting the ballot. During this first phase, until early voting begins, we also want to encourage the people we know who are not signed up to vote by mail to sign up. They have until October 24 to request that a mail ballot be mailed to them, but they shouldn’t wait that long.
Here’s an example of how important it is that we all sign up for a mail ballot. In the August 20 election, the turnout was 55% for voters who signed up to vote by mail, but less than 9% for those who were not signed up. The difference was particularly dramatic because it was a municipal election, but even in a general election the difference in turnout is above 20 percentage points. Click here for more information about why we all should sign up for a mail ballot. Click here for information about how to sign up.
Despite all our efforts some of our friends and family will vote in person. So the next big day is October 21 when early voting begins. Voters can vote early at any Supervisor of Elections office. Click here for dates, times, and locations for Early Voting. We’ll help you give them info about early voting times and locations.
All of us, and every like-minded voter we know, needs to have already voted by these final days before Election Day. Because it’s in these days that disengaged voters begin to become engaged. We need to be there to help like-minded newly engaged voters vote. Among other things, we need to staff polling places to provide info about down ballot races.
So, the first step is to get our mail ballot voters the information they need to cast their ballots. You’ll know your voter is signed up to vote by mail because there will be a “VBM” tag on their home screen in the Voter Action Pinellas campaign, in the Reach app. If you haven't started using our Reach campaign yet, you can find our three-step guide HERE.
You can filter your voter list so that it contains just mail ballot voters. Click HERE to learn how to filter your voter list.
You can text or email a link to their Voter Guide. Just click on the icon that applies. Click HERE for more information about texting or emailing from the Reach app.
You may have voters in your network who are not signed up to vote by mail. It’s not too late for those voters to request a mail ballot for the November 5 election. You’ll see in many cases that they didn’t vote in August. Here’s an opportunity to convince them to sign up for a mail ballot so that an unexpected event doesn’t stop them from voting. The Supervisor must receive a voter’s mail ballot request by October 24 for a ballot to be mailed to the voter. Click HERE for information about how you can help your voters sign up to vote by mail.
If you see a “Dropped” tag, that means that the voter voted with a mail ballot in 2022 but has not renewed their mail ballot request. All mail ballot voters were dropped from the mail ballot list after the November 2022 election, and we all are required to renew our request for the 2022-2024 elections. A voter with a “Dropped” tag is likely to want to vote by mail, but may not know they have been dropped from the list. Please make it a priority to contact this voter and help them sign up for a mail ballot.
You may find that some of your voters are signed up to vote by mail but didn’t vote it. You may want to check in with them to make sure they didn’t have a problem with their mail ballot. We’ve found that many snowbirds assume that their mail ballots will be forwarded to them by the USPS along with the rest of their mail. That’s a reasonable assumption, but it’s not true. They have to submit a special request to the Supervisor for the ballot to be mailed to the new address. Click HERE for information about making that request.
We will be updating our voter data, so you’ll be able to see that your voter’s has been processed. And if you are helping them sign up for a mail ballot, you’ll be able to see that their mail ballot request has been processed.
If you have any questions, please contact your Point Person. If you’re not sure who your Point Person is or you don’t yet have a Point Person assignment, please contact us at https://voteractionpinellas.org/contact/. Thank you!
