Last Day to Vote in Miami-Dade Is Tuesday: Polls 7 to 7, and Mail Ballots Must Be in by 7 P.M.
Early voting ended Sunday night at 28 sites. What is left is one day — Tuesday, Nov. 3 — at your assigned precinct, and a hard 7 p.m. receipt deadline for every mail ballot still sitting on a kitchen counter.
Monday is the last full day before it, and the searches say the country knows it: 'last day to vote' sat at No. 2 on the Google Trends US snapshot read by this newsroom overnight, with 'how to vote in the us midterms' right behind it at No. 3. In Miami-Dade the mechanics are now simple, because most of the options have closed. Early voting ran from Oct. 19 through Sunday, Nov. 1, at 28 sites, and it is over. There is no early voting on Monday, and there is no voting anywhere in the county on Monday at all.
Election Day itself, Tuesday, Nov. 3, works the old way: polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and you vote at your assigned precinct — any of the 28 early sites will not do. Anyone in line by 7 p.m. can vote. Nineteen precincts are voting at temporary locations this year because of facility construction and scheduling conflicts, and the county says the updated location appears automatically in the voter information lookup at votemiamidade.gov, so checking your precinct before you leave is the single most useful thing a Miami-Dade voter can do on Monday.
The deadline that catches people out is the mail ballot. A vote-by-mail ballot must be received — not postmarked — by 7 p.m. on Election Day to count, and on Tuesday it can only be hand-returned to Elections Headquarters in Doral or the Downtown Branch Office, not dropped at a polling place. A ballot mailed on Monday is a gamble the county's own guidance does not ask you to take: drive it to one of the two offices instead. Registration closed Oct. 5, so Tuesday's electorate is set — 767 precincts, one day, and no extensions on the calendar.
