Added to nearly 2.67 million vote-by-mail ballots already cast, that means more than 3 million of the state’s 14.4 million voters have already participated in the election in which Florida is a key battleground between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Elections officials anticipate many counties will have more than 60 percent of the anticipated turnout completed before Nov. 3.
The Division of Elections website Tuesday morning listed 366,436 early votes being cast in the 52 counties that started early voting Monday. That included 153,743 early votes cast by registered Republicans and 154,004 by Democrats, with the remainder coming from unaffiliated or third-party voters.
Of the vote-by-mail ballots already in, Democrats had returned 1.29 million ballots as of Tuesday morning, and 812,363 had come from Republicans, according to the Division of Elections.
Another 3.15 million vote-by-mail ballots had been sent out, including 1.3 million to Democrats and 1 million to Republicans, but had not been returned. All counties are required to offer early voting from Saturday to Oct. 31, but they had the option of beginning Monday.
They also have the option to extend early voting to Nov. 1. Liberty and Sumter counties started offering early voting on Tuesday. It will expand into Dixie and Gilchrist counties on Wednesday.
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This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2020.
