Last Day to Early Vote: Three Wesley Chapel Sites Close at 6 Tonight

Early voting in Pasco County ends at 6 p.m. Saturday, and the three Wesley Chapel sites taking ballots today are the last convenient stop before voting shifts to assigned neighborhood precincts on Tuesday, Aug. 18. Any registered Pasco voter can walk into any of them, regardless of where they live in the county. That flexibility disappears tonight.

The sites opened at 10 a.m. and are part of a 12-location countywide schedule that began Aug. 8.

Wesley Chapel site	Address
New River Library	34043 State Road 54
Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus	3021 Sports Coast Way
Wesley Chapel District Park	7727 Boyette Road

Bring photo and signature identification. Without it, you can still cast a provisional ballot, but it gets reviewed later rather than counted on the spot. Supervisor of Elections Brian E. Corley's office is posting live wait times for all 12 locations at PascoVotes.gov/EV_WaitTimes, which is worth a look before you drive over on a Saturday afternoon. Voters who have moved can update their record online or call the elections office at 800-851-8754 to speed things up at the check-in table.

Three school board seats, and every Wesley Chapel voter gets a say

Florida runs a closed primary, so the partisan contests on your ballot are limited to your own party. Nonpartisan races are not. Judicial and school board contests appear on every ballot, and that is where the local stakes sit for families with kids in Pasco schools.

Three school board seats are up, all elected countywide: District 1, District 3 and District 5. Any of them can be decided outright on Tuesday if a candidate clears 50%.

The District 3 field is the crowded one. Cynthia Armstrong is retiring after 16 years, and five candidates are running to replace her: Matt Geiger, Sean O'Flannery, Dr. Kirk Phillips, Erin Stroupe and Mollyana Ward, a former longtime Wesley Chapel resident who has been endorsed by Superintendent John Legg. If nobody tops half the vote, the top two go to a runoff on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

In District 1, incumbent Al Hernandez is not seeking another term, and four candidates qualified: Gino Collura, Kimberly Coward, Christopher King and Brian Perras. District 5 incumbent Megan Harding faces Michelle Mandarin. Two Sixth Circuit judicial seats, Group 39 and Group 44, are also on every Wesley Chapel ballot.

The partisan races

Republicans in the Wesley Chapel portion of Florida House District 54 decide a contested primary between incumbent Rep. Randy Maggard and challenger Michael Pultorak, a Wesley Chapel resident and 26-year fire captain making his first run for office. Because only a write-in candidate qualified for November, the primary winner is effectively the winner of the seat.

Republicans also choose between incumbent county commissioner Lisa Yeager and first-time candidate Jonathan Deckard in a countywide commission primary. Both parties have statewide contests on the ballot, including an open race for governor with 11 Republicans and six Democrats running, plus U.S. Senate, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner.

If you miss tonight

Tuesday is different in one important way: you must vote at your own assigned precinct, not wherever is closest. Florida polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. You can confirm your precinct through the Pasco elections office precinct finder.

Holding a vote-by-mail ballot? The deadline to request one passed Aug. 6, and a completed ballot has to be in the hands of the elections office by 7 p.m. Tuesday. Postmarks do not count. At this point, dropping it off beats mailing it.

Results start posting after polls close Tuesday night. Where no candidate clears 50% in the nonpartisan school board races, those contests carry over to Nov. 3, which is also when the general election ballot gets its county commission and congressional matchups.

For more from around town, visit Wesley Chapel Community Website, and follow along on Facebook, Instagram and X. Voting today or Tuesday? Tell us how long the line was and join the conversation in our Community Forum.

You can read more government and politics stories and follow our education coverage as the school board races are decided.

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