TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WFLA) — The race for Matt Gaetz’s Florida Congressional seat is underway.

Those who already hold public office, must resign their current positions in order to be considered a candidate.

There are several deadlines candidates, voters, and supervisors of elections need to meet leading up until Election Day on April 1, 2025.

Concerns are now rising about the tight timeline for the special election. One of them is that supervisors of elections on the panhandle and across the state are still cleaning up from the November general election.

For most Floridians, election season is over, but for counties on the panhandle like Okaloosa and Escambia, things are just starting to heat up.

“People think that post-election day, they’re done, it’s over and there’s still a lot of accounting that has to be done and reconciliation that has to be done before you can officially close the books on the election,” said Sonya Daniel, Chief Deputy for Supervisor of Elections in Escambia County.

Daniel shared that while the counties may be “well practiced” just coming off an election, they still need to recruit and train poll workers, take care of ballot layouts and ballot orders, and most importantly, vote-by-mail requests need to be renewed.

“When they compress the schedule like they have, it’s going to make it super difficult for us to meet those obligations,” said Paul Lux, supervisor of Elections in Okaloosa County.

Lux said the two deadlines top of mind this week are the qualifying period for candidates and vote-by-mail ballots for military civilians. Lux reminds folks, the Florida Legislature changed the law affecting vote-by-mail ballots with Senate Bill 90 in 2021.

“If they don’t have a request on file, they don’t know there’s an election coming,” Lux said. “Then don’t know to ask for a ballot, because all of their requests expire at the end of this year.”

Lux assures voters he is doing everything he can to reach military members and their families. Okaloosa is home to one of the largest air force bases in the world, and many members don’t have access to the special election announcements.

“When we are done with this Special Election for Congressional District 1, we can expect another round of Special Elections to replace all of those House and Senate members who resigned to run for the Congressional seat,” Lux said.