Two Dade City Precincts Have New Polling Places for the Aug. 18 Primary

Two Dade City precincts will vote somewhere new on Tuesday, Aug. 18, and one of the changes is subtle enough that longtime voters could walk into the wrong building. Under the Supervisor of Elections' legal notice of polling place changes, Precinct 1 moves from First Baptist Church of Dade City at 37511 Church Ave. to First United Methodist Church at 37628 Church Ave., a short distance up the same street. Precinct 114 moves out of VFW Post 4283 at 12735 VFW Road to Discover Fellowship Church at 12561 Smith Road.

The changes take effect for the Aug. 18 Primary and Special Primary Election and stay in place for elections after that.

Precinct	Where to vote Aug. 18
1	First United Methodist Church, 37628 Church Ave. (was First Baptist Church of Dade City, 37511 Church Ave.)
114	Discover Fellowship Church, 12561 Smith Road (was VFW Post 4283, 12735 VFW Road)

On Election Day there is no flexibility: you have to vote at your assigned polling place. Florida polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. If you are not sure which precinct you are in, the Supervisor of Elections keeps a lookup tool and voter information page at pascovotes.gov, and your precinct number appears on your voter information card.

Early voting: Aug. 8 through Aug. 15

Early voting runs eight straight days, Saturday, Aug. 8 through Saturday, Aug. 15, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day at 12 sites across Pasco County. The closest one for most of east Pasco is the East Pasco Government Center, 14236 6th St., Suite 200, in Dade City.

The advantage of early voting is that any registered Pasco voter can use any of the 12 sites, regardless of precinct. So if the precinct change is going to trip you up, the simplest fix is to vote before Election Day.

For anyone voting by mail, the deadline to have a ballot mailed to you is 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 6. Voted mail ballots have to be in the elections office by 7 p.m. on Aug. 18, and they can be hand-delivered to any of the county's three elections offices, including the Dade City location. A ballot postmarked on Election Day but arriving later does not count.

Why this primary matters locally

School board seats are on the Aug. 18 ballot, including the seat that represents east Pasco. Pasco school board races are nonpartisan and decided countywide, which means every registered voter in Dade City gets a say in them no matter which party box they checked, or whether they checked one at all.

Those races can also end in August. If a candidate takes more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, that person wins the seat outright. If nobody clears half, the top two advance to the November general election. In a crowded field, a few hundred votes in east Pasco can decide who goes on and who goes home.

The registration and party-change deadline, known as book closing, was July 20, so the rolls for this election are set. Voters who missed it can still register now, but the change applies to the next election, not this one.

What to do before Election Day

If you have voted at First Baptist Church of Dade City or the VFW hall in past cycles, check your card or look up your precinct now rather than on the morning of the 18th. Both new sites are churches, and both are within Dade City, but neither is where the ballot box used to be.

Early voting opens the morning of Saturday, Aug. 8 at 10 a.m. Sample ballots and the full list of the 12 early voting sites are posted on the Supervisor of Elections website, along with the official notice of the polling place changes.

For more local coverage, visit Dade City Community Website and follow us on Facebook. Voting somewhere new this year, or have a question about your precinct? Join the conversation in our Community Forum. You can also read more government and politics stories and keep up with local alerts.

Header photo: Ebyabe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)