Christine Jordan Sexton
Secretary of State Cord Byrd said 19% of registered voters turned out for Florida’s Primary Tuesday, and he attributed the less-than-stellar turnout to the lack of any big statewide races.
At a brief Tuesday evening press conference Byrd, the state’s chief elections officer, said there were no reported problems other than some Supervisor of Elections Offices having difficulty with their with their “public facing websites.” Byrd said the problems did not impact the counties’ ability to send election results to the state website. Byrd promised the state would “get to the bottom” of the issue.
“It is on the lower end but not out of the historical range,” Byrd said, adding that the last several Primaries saw voter turnout as low as 18% and as high as 28%. “We had no statewide Primary races. It was really more of a local issue.”
Throughout Florida, voters decided many contests that have implications on their communities, from local School Boards to judicial races to constitutional officers who face competitive Primaries.
The Primary was seen as a dry run ahead of the November General Election, when turnout will be much higher due to the presidential contest featuring Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. One noticeable trend is that it appears the number of voters using mail-in ballots has dropped since 2022, which comes after a law kicked in that canceled all vote-by-mail requests following the Midterm Election.
The most recent numbers posted by the Division of Elections showed that 1.32 million people had voted by mail as of early Tuesday. That compares to nearly 1.75 million vote-by-mail ballots cast during the 2022 Primary.
Of the 1.32 million who had voted by mail, 583,988 were Democrats, 540,895 were Republicans and the remaining 186,019 were no-party voters.
The Tuesday night press conference was the second of the day for Byrd. At an early morning press conference the state’s chief elections officer said there were no major incidents Tuesday morning that precluded residents from being able to cast their ballots.
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office, though, took a complaint from Priscilla Marie Gray on Aug.17 accusing House District 81 candidate Yvette Benarroch of assaulting her. Benarroch, a chapter Chair for Moms for Liberty who has worked for campaigns for U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and others, has called it a political stunt.
