We are within a month of voting for the first time in 2026, as primary election day is on Aug. 18.
If you would like to vote— or change your party election in order to vote for that party’s candidates in primary races— you must be registered by Monday.
If you want to receive a vote-by-mail ballot for the primary, you must make that request by Aug. 6.
The hub for all of that information locally is the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections office at 2509 East U.S. Highway 192 (near the corner of 192 and Partin Settlement Road) in Kissimmee. Contact them at 407-742-6000, soe@voteosceola.gov or www. voteosceola.gov.
Osceola Supervisor of Elections Mary Jane Arrington was part of a roundtable Tuesday that included SOEs from other Central Florida counties: Volusia (Lisa Lewis), Lake (Alan Hays), Orange (Karen Castor-Dentel), Seminole (Amy Pennock) and Brevard (Tim Bobanic).
The roundtable, put together by the News Collaborative of Central Florida, of which the Osceola News-Gazette is a partner in, was an opportunity for Central Florida’s election administration leaders to give voters ideas about how to vote, making a plan to vote, assurances their votes are secure and will be counted properly— but, most importantly, to simply go vote either by mail, during Early Voting or on Election Day.
(A podcast from Tuesday’s event will appear on Central Florida Public Media’s Talking Central Florida social media page on Facebook and Instagram.)
Arrington, like her colleagues, stressed that voters need to be election-ready next month with a voting plan.
“Pay attention to info we’re sending you. You’ll be getting a new voter registration card,” she said. “You don’t have to have a reason for doing it the way you like. The problem voters are the ones who show up at 6:55 on election day at the wrong place.
“We were greatly affected by redistricting, so you may have a new voting precinct location, which is what you’d use on Election Day.”
Early voting, which is how the majority of Osceola County votes were cast in 2024, begins Aug. 7 at 11 locations. As for mail-in ballots—they’re ready to go and will be mailed out in the coming days—those who have followed the state’s rules and made a new application are urged to vote them and send them as soon as possible. The SOEs remind voters that those ballots need to be in election workers hands at the office by 7 p.m. on Election Night—not postmarked by then.
It’s a message that the elections leaders think many voters didn’t get, as all of the county SOEs reported mail-in request numbers down from the 2024 cycle, in some cases as much as 50%.
Still, the election officials Tuesday stressed that those mail-in ballots are every bit as secure as those cast in person, with a system in place in 39 of 67 counties to audit the entire voting system after an election in a system that is “Our tabulation system is not connected to the internet,” Hays said.
“Your vote is like money to me,” Lewis said. “It takes two people to go anywhere near where the ballots are. There’s a chain of security for ballots and machines. It’s disheartening that people are so quick to believe the bad stuff they hear.”
The process includes verifying the signature on every mail-in ballot that comes in.
“It seems laborious at first glance, but it isn’t to retain your rights,” Hays said. “Elections workers are where democracy starts. One of the biggest myths that bothers supervisors of elections are the people who don’t know what they’re talking about in influential positions putting out misinformation about the election process.”
And as for the hot-button immigration issue, ICE is like the police: unless they’re voting or in the case of police have been called to deal with an issue, they’re subject to the 150-foot “safe area” around a polling site.
Arrington said her staff welcomes the public to come watch the process on election night—or even become a poll worker or volunteer to gain critical insight.
But, the most critical part of it is your ballot. And while there will be a few races in closed primaries that just those members of a party will vote in next month—such as the Republican primary for Congressional District 9, and those for Republican and Democrat in County Commission District 3 and, oh yeah, the Governor’s race—there will be a “universal primary” for State House District 47 that all voters regardless of party affiliation will vote in come Aug. 18, along with a number of nonpartisan city at local races.
There will be two City Commission races in Kissimmee and one in St. Cloud, and District 1 and 3 voters will choose their School Board candidate.
“Don’t disenfranchise yourselves,” Arrington said. “We just want you to come vote.”
“Pay attention to info we’re sending you. You’ll be getting a new voter registration card.”
MARY JANE ARRINGTON Osceola County Supervisor of Elections
