Florida’s primary is coming up fast, and election officials have already mailed out over 1.4 million ballots. Early in-person voting starts August 8 in most counties, so plenty of voters will hit the polls ahead of the official August 18 primary.
Here’s where things stand: Democratic voters requested 623,548 ballots. Republicans asked for 493,469, while independents accounted for 270,642. Another 31,184 went to people registered with minor parties. These numbers come straight from the state’s Division of Elections, and more ballots are still on their way.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, emphasized the state’s focus on access: “Ron DeSantis has said that Florida is the gold standard when it comes to vote by mail, and so we are going to continue pushing this access to the ballot box,” she told reporters Monday.
The number of mail ballots has dipped since the pandemic. During the 2020 election, Floridians cast 2.34 million mail votes. That dropped to 1.75 million in 2022. This year, 1.4 million votes have come in through the mail so far.
Republicans, echoing President Donald Trump, continue to criticize vote by mail. Trump called it “mail-in cheating,” despite offering no evidence for these claims. In April, he issued an executive order to have the U.S. Postal Service restrict vote-by-mail eligibility to those already on federal voter lists. A judge blocked that order in June.
The rules have also changed in Florida. In 2021, the GOP-led Legislature required voters to request mail ballots before every election cycle, instead of every four years.
So far this year, over 3,000 Floridians have sent in their mail ballots: 1,397 Democrats, 1,141 Republicans, 525 independents, and 49 voters from minor parties. The earliest batches went mostly to overseas voters.
Most counties will open their polling locations for early voting from August 8 through August 15. If you still want to vote in the primary or switch your party affiliation, make sure you’re registered before the Monday deadline.
Englewood REVIEW recently sat down with candidate John Fleming, and have reached out to every candidate for interviews. We’ll publish these conversations as the primary approaches, so keep an eye out for those updates. Click here to read the complete interview with John Fleming.
Click here for the website to the Florida Division of Elections.
