Election Day is here.
Polls are now open across Florida and will stay open until the last voter in line by 7 p.m. local time has cast a ballot.
Tuesday caps off voting in an extraordinary election year that has been fundamentally affected by the coronavirus pandemic and by an incumbent president who has been unafraid to buck some of the conventional political norms — including refusing to say whether he’d concede if he lost.
Already, more than 9 million Floridians have cast ballots in the general election, meaning that Florida’s turnout rate before today’s polls opened is already at 63 percent. That includes about 4.7 million people who have cast ballots by mail and another 4.3 million who voted in person during early voting.
The early voting turnout indicates not only voter enthusiasm in this highly charged presidential election year but also shifting trends in how people are voting amid the pandemic.
For months, elections officials, political parties and others have been aggressively promoting early voting options as a way to avoid potential crowds on Election Day. Vote-by-mail, in particular, was touted as a safe alternative to in-person voting — leading to record numbers of Floridians requesting and casting mail ballots this year.
Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to vote by mail in Florida this election — a switch from previous years. That can be traced at least partially to differing attitudes toward the coronavirus and to unfounded attacks on mail voting by President Donald Trump.
Elections officials have also spent the last several months putting in additional health and safety measures for in-person voting and shoring up their numbers of poll workers after some counties saw large numbers drop out at the last minute during March’s presidential preference primary.
Thanks to some of these preparations, early voting appears to have gone fairly smoothly in Florida.
Still, 2020 has made itself felt throughout this election cycle. Both Okaloosa and Brevard counties opted to close one of their early voting sites at the last minute after elections workers tested positive for the coronavirus. A few counties in the Panhandle reduced their early voting hours as Hurricane Zeta blew through the region last week.
In Duval County, a judge resigned from the elections canvassing board last week after a Florida Times-Union reporter discovered the judge had repeatedly donated to Trump’s campaign and had several signs supporting Trump outside his home.
In Miami-Dade County, special agents with the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General discovered a small number of undelivered ballots sitting in a post office after reports of a backlog of mail at the facility.
Concerns about the Postal Service, as well as reports about higher rejection rates for mail ballots, have swayed some voters who had requested mail ballots to vote in person instead. Some of those voters are likely to show up at the polls Tuesday.
In Hillsborough County, about 39,000 voters who requested mail ballots had opted, as of Saturday, to vote in person instead, according to Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer. Pinellas County has also seen tens of thousands of voters switching from mail ballots to in-person voting.
Sean Ottaway, 39, of Temple Terrace, said he ended up voting in person Saturday at an early voting site after his mail ballot never arrived in his mailbox.
He’d requested a mail ballot in hopes of being able to avoid being near other voters. But he said that while the early voting site felt less socially distanced than he’d like, the process went pretty quickly and smoothly.
All eyes now turn to the thousands of polling places across Florida and the significant numbers of voters who have waited to vote Tuesday.
Democrats had cast about 115,000 more ballots than Republicans moving into Election Day, although Republicans are widely expected to turn out in larger numbers at precincts today. Of course, party turnout numbers may not completely reflect which candidates voters are choosing.
Key to the presidential race between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden will be Florida’s sizable number of no-party-affiliated voters. These voters make up roughly a quarter of registered voters in the nation’s largest swing state. Turnout among these voters stood at about 52 percent heading into Election Day, according to data posted Tuesday morning by the state.
Heading into Election Day, Democrats had cast 39.1 percent of the votes to Republicans' 37.8 percent, while no-party-affiliated voters accounted for 21.6 percent of the votes cast so far.
Voters who have not yet returned their mail ballots can do so by dropping them off at elections offices in their counties by 7 p.m. Any mail ballots returned after this time are not allowed to be counted; experts have repeatedly cautioned that one of the main reasons a mail ballot is not counted is because it arrives too late.
In Florida, elections officials have been working for weeks to process mail ballots they’ve already received. That improves the likelihood that the bulk of the state’s ballots will be tallied fairly quickly, and increases the chances that Floridians will know whether Trump or Biden won the state within several hours.
But, given Florida’s notoriously close elections, voters should be prepared to be patient and wait. It could potentially take days or weeks for enough ballots to be counted to determine a winner; in that time, misinformation or premature claims of victory could lead to discord or confusion.
DECLARING WINNERS: How the Associated Press makes election calls, a Q&A
WHAT TO WATCH: What’s on TV for election night, from news to comedian commentators
We’re working hard to bring you the latest news on the elections in Florida. This effort takes a lot of resources to gather and update. If you haven’t already subscribed, please consider buying a print or digital subscription. Or click here to make a donation to the Tampa Bay Times Journalism Fund.
"now" - Google News
November 03, 2020 at 09:37PM
https://ift.tt/34QZm0w
Election Day is here; Florida polls now open across the state - Tampa Bay Times
"now" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35sfxPY
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Election Day is here; Florida polls now open across the state - Tampa Bay Times"
Post a Comment