HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Despite accusations about how mailing in your ballot would cause a bottleneck in getting ballots counted, election officials in the two largest counties in Tampa Bay say mail in ballots made it to their offices in record numbers.


What You Need To Know

  • 317,000 mail-in ballots received in Hillsborough County

  • Only 383 ballots arrived too late to count

  • Similar results in Pinellas County

  • GOP has pending lawsuit against Hillsborough SOE

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer said the number of mail in ballots his office received is staggering.

“We got back over 317,000 vote by mail ballots,” Latimer said, “which is more than I have ever sent out, before much less got back.”

Latimer says what’s even more impressive is that out of those hundreds of thousands of mail in ballots, only 383 of them arrived too late to count.

“To have that that low of a number that were late tells me that we really got the word out along with all of our partners,” Latimer said, “that includes the media. We got the word out when that ballot had to be back in our office.”

The numbers are similar in Pinellas County where more than 348,000 people voted by mail.

“We only had 174 ballots that arrived too late to be counted”, said Pinellas County Deputy Supervisor of Elections Dustin Chase.

“Those ballots were postmarked either the day before the election or the day of the election,” he added.

Despite these numbers, three GOP candidates have a lawsuit pending against the Hillsborough County SOE claiming flaws handling mail in ballots.

“If you take a look at the voter turnout data, you can see that mail ballots are indeed the great equalizer across demographics,” Chase said.