What's on Miami-Dade's Ballot Tomorrow: A Governor, Three Amendments, Six County Questions and a $450 Million Miami Bond
The mechanics are settled — assigned precinct, 7 to 7. This is the other half of voting: the governor's race, a homestead-exemption amendment that needs 60 percent, a school-tax renewal, and a city bond and marina lease for Miami voters.
By now Miami-Dade knows where and when: Tuesday, November 3, at your assigned precinct among the county's 767, polls open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. What waits on the ballot is the part worth a Monday read. At the top, Florida picks its next governor, succeeding the term-limited Ron DeSantis — the race this station covered through its final Sunday, when Democrat David Jolly rallied in Miami and Republican Byron Donalds closed the weekend in Tampa beside DeSantis. Below it sit three proposed amendments to the state constitution, including a large increase to the homestead exemption — and in Florida an amendment is not a majority vote: it needs 60 percent to pass, a threshold that has decided more ballot questions than the campaigns have.
The county's own questions fill the middle of the ballot: six Miami-Dade charter questions and a renewal of the school tax, the kind of lines voters meet for the first time in the booth unless they read the sample ballot first. Inside the City of Miami, the ballot adds two city decisions with long tails — a $450 million bond and the Virginia Key marina lease — choices that will shape the city's waterfront and its debt long after the governor's race is old news.
None of this requires a position from this newsroom; it requires a sample ballot, which the Supervisor of Elections publishes for every precinct, and two minutes with it before Tuesday rather than during it. Voters who still hold a mail ballot should treat it as hand luggage, not mail: it must be received by 7 p.m. Tuesday at Elections Headquarters in Doral or the Downtown Branch Office, and polling places cannot accept it. The precinct decides the close races. The bottom of the ballot decides the next decade of the county. Read both halves before you go.
