How is South Florida’s mail voting going? Error rate in Miami-Dade is revealing.

In vote-rich South Florida, county canvassing boards have been rejecting invalid mail-in ballots at a significantly lower rate compared to the past presidential election because local officials have been correcting voter errors on signatures through outreach and technology over the past two weeks.

In Miami-Dade, the election department has flagged only 2,816 vote-by-mail ballots for irregularities such as no voter signature or mismatched signatures out of 449,645 ballots returned by Friday. The result: an error rate of 0.5% for mail-in ballots so far before Election Day, Nov. 3 — half the rate at the end of the 2016 presidential election.

Low mail-in ballot errors have also been the trend in Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to records.

Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White said one of the major reasons for the low vote-by-mail rejection rate is that voters have grown accustomed to using that method and her office has reached out to those who make mistakes so they can be corrected through signature affidavits.

White also said that about 138,000 voters chose to deliver their vote-by-mail ballots to more than 30 early voting sites in Miami-Dade instead of posting them in the mail, allowing election officials to fix any signature mistakes on ballot envelopes.

“We’re really beating the drums to get people to sign their ballots and turn them in on time,” White told the Miami Herald on Friday, after convening with the county’s three-member canvassing board, including herself and two county judges. The board certifies the results of the general election.

The presidential race between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump is expected to be extremely close in Florida — akin to Florida’s infamous 2000 vote — so the mail-in results will be a crucial factor in the outcome. In South Florida, the vote-by-mail results have been dominated by Democrats, but Republicans have been gaining substantial ground through early voting in person over the past two weeks. The big unknown is the independent voter with no party affiliation, and there are hundreds of thousands of them in South Florida.

White also said that heading into the weekend, the election department now estimates about 130,000 voters who requested mail-in ballots have not returned them — sharply down from more than 200,000 reported on the department’s website. The big difference, she said, was that about 70,000 who requested mail-in ballots have canceled them and opted to vote in person at early voting sites.

Recognizing how tight the presidential race might be in Florida, the political parties say they have stepped up efforts to contact voters who have cast mail-in ballots with bad or no signatures to help get them fixed. The parties are allowed to obtain voter information from the election department.

“I think the overall rejection rate — at least for Democrats — is going to be far lower than we’ve ever had before,” said Steve Simeonidis, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

Nelson Diaz, who chairs the Miami-Dade GOP, shared that view. “Republicans have seen a very low rejection rate,” he said. “Republicans have been doing this for a long time. We’re very used to absentee voting.”

But Diaz and other political observers said the big question looming over the weekend is how many more mail-in ballots will arrive by the 7 p.m. deadline on Election Day, Nov. 3. If there are any mistakes on ballot envelopes, the election department has only until 5 p.m. Thursday to try and correct them or the votes won’t count.

Dan Smith, a political science professor and elections expert at the University of Florida, said the low mail-in ballot rejection rate in South Florida is an encouraging trend. But he noted that time is running out for this critical bloc of voters and for election departments to correct any last-minute mistakes.

“You’re seeing a lot more vigilance about voting by mail by the elections departments and political parties,” Smith said, noting that the expected close presidential race has provided tremendous motivation to ensure that every vote counts.

“But we will still have huge numbers of [mail-in] ballots that won’t count because of signature flaws,” he said. “The clock will run out to correct many of them.”