Mail-in voting soars, early voting is slow

Democrats have mail-in edge ahead of state’s primary

Mail-in voting is going strong with a week to go before the Aug. 18 primary, with more than 1.6 million ballots cast in Florida. And after years of Republicans having the edge, Democrats

have the advantage with mail-in voters in the state so far.

But the first week of early voting in the age of coronavirus is going relatively slowly.

As of Tuesday, mail-in ballots made up nearly 90% of the more than 1.8 million ballots cast statewide. Overall, there are nearly 2.7 million more mail ballots requested but not yet returned.

More than 815,000 Democrats have voted by mail so far, compared with nearly 585,000 Republicans. The remainder is made up of independent and minor party voters.

That party split is a major change from 2018, when Republicans had a 621,402 to 564,607 edge in vote-bymail over Democrats in the August primary, and an even bigger 627,397 to 489,646 edge in August 2016.

Voting by mail has become less popular nationwide among Republicans after President Trump attacked the process over the past few months. Florida Republicans were forced to parse Trump’s language in mailers urging their voters to sign up for mail-in ballots before Trump abruptly announced this month that

Florida vote-by-mail system, specifically, was “safe and sound” because Ron DeSantis is governor.

Democrats, meanwhile, have accused the Trump administration of deliberately slowing down mail delivery at the U.S. Postal Service and hiking stamp rates for counties to send out ballots.

In Orange County, more than 78,000 ballots have been received by mail, Orange County elections supervisor Bill Cowles said, out of about 211,000 ballots mailed out.

That number is a record for a primary election. About 59% came from Democrats, compared with 25% from Republicans.

In Seminole County, more than 25,000 mail-in ballots have been received out of 93,000 mailed out, with Democrats having an

edge of about 11,500 to 10,000 over Republicans, a telling trend for what had been considered a GOP county but was won by Democratic statewide candidates in 2018.

In Osceola County, more than 25,000 mail-ins have been received out of about 72,000 mailed out, while in Lake County, about 20,000 have been received out of 57,000 mailed. Even in Lake, another Republican stronghold, Democrats were leading Republicans by about 10,000 to 7,000 in mail-ins.

Early voting, meanwhile, was nowhere near those numbers. About 226,000 voters have cast ballots in person at early voting sites statewide. In Central Florida, almost 17,000 voted early in Orange, 3,800 in Osceola, 3,200 in Seminole and 3,300 in Lake.

On Saturday at 10:30 a.m., the early voting site at the Marks Street Senior

Center in Orlando was fully staffed with about a dozen masked poll workers but only two voters.

Still, Cowles said early voting numbers were almost 4,000 votes ahead of the same period in 2016, even as storms shut down voting sites for much of Friday.

Republicans had the edge over Democrats in early voting, with more than 122,000 casting early ballots statewide compared to about 89,000 Democrats. The GOP also just barely was ahead of Democrats in early voting in Lake and Seminole, while Democrats had the edge in Orange and Osceola.

Seminole supervisor Chris Anderson said some voters are finding a third option between voting in person amid the coronavirus pandemic and relying on a beleaguered Postal Service.

On the first day of early voting in Seminole on Saturday, more people went to early voting sites to drop off their mail-in ballots, about 1,300, than the number of people who actually cast an in-person ballot, about 1,080.

“That’s just the trend right now,” Anderson said. “So it appears as though voters are just bypassing the post office and bringing them to us.”

The drop-off box at the Casselberry location, he added, “was getting so full that they thought they were going to have to call in reinforcements.”

Early voting continues until Saturday in Seminole and Lake counties and Sunday in Orange and Osceola.

The primary election day is Aug. 18, and mail-in ballots must be received by 7 p.m. that day in order to be counted.