Jim Rosica
The number of Floridians voting by mail for this year’s primary election has exceeded a half-million.
As of Friday, the state’s Division of Elections website showed 535,663 ballots had been returned to county supervisors of elections.
Republicans still are leading Democrats, 257,163 to 205,384.
Historically, Florida Republicans have had an advantage with vote-by-mail ballots, while the Democrats are stronger with early voting.
Third-party and no-party registered voters came in with a combined 73,116 ballots.
Elections supervisors started mailing ballots July 26. The primary election is Aug. 30.
Lawmakers recently changed the name of such ballots to “vote-by-mail” ballots from the traditional “absentee” ballots.
