More than 1.1 million Floridians have cast ballots as early voting opens in over half the state
More than 1.1 million votes have been cast for the November election, with the in-person early voting option now available in more than half the state.
The state Division of Elections posted Tuesday morning that just over 171,000 people cast ballots at in-person early voting locations that became available in more than half of Florida's 67 counties on Monday. Early in-person voting is mandatory statewide starting Saturday through Oct. 31.
Another 933,000 ballots have been cast through the mail from among the 13.7 million Floridians registered to vote in the Nov. 3 contest.
Ulysses Roberson, a Tallahassee voter at the Lake Jackson Community Center on Monday, said he preferred early voting as "you don't have to fight the crowd."
"We fought for this vote and our civil rights. I've come out here and done it because of that," Roberson said. "My ancestors always did this. When I was coming up, they always told us in my family to do this."
Before the early voting locations opened in Leon County on Monday, Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley encouraged voters to consider the option "as a way of avoiding lines on Election Day."
Statewide, Democrats accounted for nearly 400,000 vote-by-mail ballots and just over 68,500 early votes, compared to about 340,000 vote-by-mail ballots and 69,000 early votes by registered Republicans.
Floridians without a party affiliation accounted for nearly 30,000 early votes and 175,000 votes through the mail at the same time.
Those registered with a third party accounted for just over 4,000 early votes and nearly 23,000 have cast mail ballots.
In the past few election cycles, Democrats have been more willing to use the vote-by-mail option than Republicans, as President Donald Trump has slammed that method of voting, despite frequently casting mail ballots himself. Conversely, Republicans have exceeded Democratic vote-by-mail gains by flooding early voting locations.
But some former Democratic political strategists speculated that recent changes in Florida's election procedures, focused on vote-by-mail, are shifting more Democrats toward early voting, where counties set up polling locations in select public places such as libraries and community centers.
"It's really early but one real issue with reading Florida VBM data is the state completely deleted the VBM request list a few years back, meaning everyone has to reapply every cycle. Undoubtedly plenty of people will choose another way of voting," Steve Schale, a Tallahassee Democratic consultant, stated in a post on X on Monday.
In the 2018 general election, Republicans accounted for 1.08 million vote-by-mail ballots to 1.03 million Democrats. In early voting that year, Democrats accounted for 1.14 million early votes to 1.05 million Republicans.
Those numbers started to shift in 2020 as Trump pointed to mail ballots while falsely raising issues of "rigged" and fraudulent elections.
Even though Trump won Florida, Democrat Joe Biden defeated him in the Electoral College, winning the 2020 election. Nevertheless, the GOP-led state Legislature passed a law in 2021 requiring that requests for vote-by-mail ballots be submitted after each general election.
Democrats accounted for 1.19 million of the 2.77 million vote-by-mail ballots cast in the 2022 general election, compared to just over 1 million mail votes from Republicans. Meanwhile, 1.17 million Republicans went to early voting locations compared to just over 675,000 Democrats.
Two years later, Democrats were up in vote-by-mail voting, 1.26 million to 1.05 million, while 2.5 million Republicans used early voting compared to 1.5 million by Democrats.
Of the 7.8 million votes cast in Florida's 2022 general election, 2.7 million were by mail, and 2.29 million went to early voting locations.