Jim Rosica
Republicans are leading Democrats in the number of votes-by-mail already turned in for the 2016 primary election by more than 14,000 ballots.
The latest figures were on the state’s Division of Elections website Friday morning.
Registered Republicans submitted 98,311 ballots to their county supervisors of elections, with registered Democrats turning in 83,805.
Historically, Florida Republicans have had an advantage with vote-by-mail ballots, while the Democrats were stronger with early voting.
No-party-affiliated voters tally 24,837, and “other” is at 5,399, according to the website, for an overall total of 212,352.
Elections supervisors started mailing ballots on July 26. Lawmakers recently changed the name of such ballots to “vote-by-mail” ballots from the traditional “absentee” ballots.
The Tampa Bay area dominates the numbers. Pinellas County voters come in first with 26,603 having voted by mail, and Hillsborough County voters are second with 23,326.
Broward County is a distant third with 16,560 votes-by-mail.
