4,400 ballots already rejected in early Florida voting

Florida’s Presidential Primary Primary takes place in 19 days, but voters are casting ballots daily in absentee voting.

To date, more than 433,000 Floridians have voted, and participation in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada showed, more Republicans than Democrats are voting.

They’re not all being counted, though. University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith‘s blog says 4,483 absentee ballots (2,261 Republican and 1,958 Democratic) were “rejected as illegal” because of “voter error.” Another 2,615 absentee ballots (1,156 Republican and 1,378 Democratic) lack the voter’s signature, and haven’t been counted. Smith said voters can still correct those absentee ballots without signatures.

Republicans have cast more than 224,000 absentee ballots to date, Democrats more than 196,000.

Of those 224,000 absentee ballots from Republicans, 197,000 are from white voters. Latino voters have cast 20,500, 9 percent of all Republicans.

Nearly 73 percent of all Democratic ballots were cast by white voters (143,600), 14.4 percent by black voters (more than 28,000), and balance by Hispanic voters (18,000).