Did you mail a completed ballot back to the elections office in the Florida Keys? Have you checked online to confirm it’s been received and your votes counted?
You should. Some Florida Keys voters have reported significant delays in their ballots reaching the Monroe County Supervisor of Elections office in Key West,
One Keys voter, who spends the summer in Ohio, told the Keys Weekly he mailed his and his wife’s ballots from Ohio to Key West on Oct. 2 via first-class mail. The post office gave an estimated arrival date of Oct. 7, which is when he started checking the local elections office website at votemonroeflkeys.gov to confirm their ballots had been received. They had not.
As of Oct. 19, neither his nor his wife’s ballot had arrived at the Key West office.
He then called the Supervisor of Elections office in Key West to see if perhaps they were backlogged and delayed in processing ballots that had arrived, but there was no backlog, he said. The ballots simply had not arrived — 17 days later.
Finally, on Oct. 20, his wife’s ballot was confirmed as received, but not his. (The voter identified himself to the Keys Weekly, but asked that his name not be published.)
“The Monroe County Supervisor of Elections office said they have received other calls,” the voter said. “The woman I spoke with told me that some voters were resorting to paying extra to send their ballots back via UPS or FedEx in order to avoid the U.S. Postal Service. She offered to send us replacement ballots, which I accepted. If our original ballots do not show as being received and counted by the time the replacements arrive in Ohio it is my intention to return them via FedEx.”
The voter had been hearing of delays in ballots being sent out from the postal service’s Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center in Opa Locka, Florida, a facility that has had significant problems with staffing and delays, according to a May 2026 audit by the USPS Office of the Inspector General.
The Keys Weekly contacted postal officials in South Florida and asked Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Sherri Hodies about delayed ballots. She acknowledged her office has received calls, and said replacement ballots will absolutely be sent. She encouraged anyone with any questions or concerns to call the office at 305-292-3416.
Hodies also contacted a district postal representative who deals specifically with Florida election officials and election-related mail.
“Based on our phone calls about vote-by-mail ballots taking longer than usual to get to our office, she launched an investigation,” Hodies told the Keys Weekly on Oct. 21. “The Royal Palm location in Opa Locka has not had any significant delays in processing the vote-by-mail ballots nor getting them to Monroe County. However, she has asked for extra ‘all hands on deck’ to do walk-throughs of each of the premises in her district to confirm that all ballots have been processed timely and sent to the counties. She has also had a conversation with logistics to confirm that no truck or trailer is down. So far she has not found anything that has been delayed. I shared with her again that a voter had contacted the newspaper and had called us this week from multiple states. She will continue to have heavy oversight throughout the election. It is her priority to make sure all election mail is processed and sent out to county post offices timely.”
Meanwhile, the postal service strongly advises voters to mail their ballots immediately if they have not already done so.
Postal service spokeswoman Debbie Fetterly reiterated the postal service’s “long-standing recommendation that domestic, non-military voters mail their completed ballots BEFORE Election Day, and AT LEAST ONE WEEK before they must be received by their election office.”
Election Day is Nov. 3 — 11 days away. Mail your ballots immediately and consider using UPS or FedEx for assured timely delivery.
Finally, visit votemonroeflkeys.gov to track your ballot and confirm that it has been received and your votes counted. From the home page, click “Voting” at the top of the page. Then click “Vote by Mail.” Scroll to the bottom of that page for the ballot-tracking tool.
