Early voting is open in Collier and Lee through August 15, and the property tax amendment is not the thing on this ballot

Early voting for Florida's August 18 primary is open in both Collier and Lee counties and closes on Saturday, August 15.

The Collier County Supervisor of Elections gives the period as August 8 through 15, daily hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and 11 early voting sites, and states that a registered Collier voter may cast a ballot at any of them. Lee runs the same window and the same hours at 12 sites, with the same any-site rule, per WGCU.

That any-site rule is the reason to use this week rather than wait. On Election Day itself a voter is tied to an assigned precinct. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on August 18, per the Lee County Supervisor of Elections.

The mail route has already closed for anyone who has not acted. Lee's deadline to request that a ballot be mailed out passed at 5 p.m. on Thursday, August 6. A voter holding a mail ballot now faces a hard arrival deadline rather than a postmark deadline: it must reach the supervisor by 7 p.m. on August 18 to be counted. Lee's own guidance was that a ballot going back by mail should have been posted no later than Tuesday, August 4, which is why the county points voters at hand delivery instead. Secure intake stations sit at every early voting location during the early voting period, and ballots can be handed in at any Supervisor of Elections office Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

WGCU reported that more than 500,000 Floridians had already voted by mail as of Monday, August 4, out of roughly 13.5 million eligible as of late July, and that the primary ballot carries races for U.S. Senate, governor, two state cabinet seats, and congressional and legislative seats. In Collier that includes the redrawn congressional district that now runs across the state to Palm Beach, covering about 125,000 county voters.

One thing is not on this ballot, and it is the thing most likely to be on a Southwest Florida homeowner's mind.

Amendment 3, the state constitutional measure that would exempt up to $150,000 of a homestead's assessed value from non-school levies beginning January 1, 2027 and up to $250,000 from January 1, 2028, is decided on November 3, not on August 18, and it needs 60 percent to pass. The state's own Revenue Estimating Conference put its recurring non-school effect at $203.3 million a year in Collier and $453.3 million in Lee. Those figures and the schedule behind them were read off the enrolled resolution for our August 4 brief.

The amendment's ballot wording is being rewritten while this early voting window runs. A Leon County circuit judge found the title and summary misleading, and Christine Sexton reported for Florida Phoenix that the attorney general has until August 14, the second to last day of early voting, to file corrected language if there is no appeal.

Lee's early voting dates, hours and site count are credited above to WGCU rather than to the county, because the supervisor's August 18 election page sets out the vote-by-mail and Election Day rules used here but does not carry the early voting schedule, and two other pages on the same site served general election content instead. Collier's figures come from the supervisor's own site at colliervotes.gov.

Voters can confirm their own sites and check a sample ballot at colliervotes.gov and lee.vote, or by calling the Lee office at (239) 533-8683.