Over 571,000 mail-in ballots returned in Florida

More than 571,000 Floridians have already cast ballots for the November election, as Monday marked the final day residents could register to vote.

As of Monday morning, 571,718 vote-by-mail ballots had been cast, with 306,037 from Democrats and 157,924 from Republicans. Another 101,164 had been cast by voters without party affiliation and 6,593 had come from voters registered with minor parties.

Another 4.78 million ballots were mailed out but had not been returned, with more than 2.1 million going to Democrats and more than 1.5 million going to Republicans.

In Lee County, 30,072 mail-in ballots had been returned as of Monday afternoon, according to lee.vote. The Collier County Supervisor of Elections reports 22,769 mail-in ballots have been returned. In Charlotte County, 12,434 ballots have been returned.

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said the number of people voting by mail this year has dramatically increased, given the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Earley will start tabulating vote-by-mail ballots this week, and he thinks election officials should be able to keep up with the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots.

“There is an increased volume of vote-by-mail,” he said. “There will probably be more ballots than normal that need to be tabulated the last few days of the week after Election Day. But I feel very confident that we’ll be able to get that done here in Florida.”

Heading into the August primary elections, of the 13.89 million registered voters in Florida, nearly 5.17 million listed themselves as Democrats and almost 4.83 million as Republicans. Another 3.62 million registered with no party affiliation.