There are 1.1 Million Absentee Ballots in Florida that haven't been counted yet, and Bush's margin of "victory" so far is always within about 500,000 votes.
Some say they're mostly GOP, but I don't get it. Here are a few reasons why:
1.) Students vote absentee. Why? Because we move. We move a lot. And our permanent addresses, the ones on our driver's licenses, are often back home. The post office was filled with students mailing back absentee ballots when I went to mail mine. The lady there said she'd been seeing students all week, making sure they had it right, making sure they'd get their vote where it needed to go. She said it was inspiring.
These students, however, are not registered Democrats. For the most part, they're registered Independents. So, that may be why we're not seeing the numbers in the C.W.
2.) Overseas, non-military voters are primarily liberal, Democratic, etc. They make up another decent portion of the 1.1 million.
3.) Okay, military ballots do make up a portion. They favor Republicans, but not nearly as highly as they did in 2000, I'm guessing. Some of this is anecdotal. You could throw a stick onto the military base from where I grew up, and I know plenty of people in/back from/going to Iraq. But it's also backed by some loose surveys we've all seen.
4.) There was a huge push, because of no-paper-trail machine rumors, for Democrats to vote absentee. My mother got emails, and so did I (and I'm not even a registered Democrat - I'm Independent, but I signed up with the Kerry-Edwards website and the local dems) to consider voting absentee, so we could get them in without worries. We both voted absentee.
Also, some counties are putting the early voting numbers in with their numbers from tonight. Some aren't. Most aren't, actually, according to the spreadsheets online - including Seminole county where lots of students I know voted early, when on breaks from their other colleges (UF, USF, etc) and coming home to do so.
Remember, Kerry won by sizable amounts in those early voting days.
In Volusia county, some votes were lost. It's a slightly blue county. They'll be re-run through in the coming days. It's about 13,000 votes. Nobody knows for whom.
The largest precinct in Orange county, which happens to be in a predominantly lower-class, black neighboorhood, is still counting votes. Why? They closed really late because they had too many people in line. They're not reporting anything. That's a few thousand votes, about 80-90% of which Kerry should pick up. It's his strongest precinct in Orange county and possibly his strongest precinct in the I-4 corridor.
We still have large precincts out from Palm Beach County and Broward. I don't know which ones they were specifically - can't fully track it down - but they too had long lines at closing time. I have a hunch we pick up some ground there, and I've been told (but can't confirm) they were also among the largest precincts.
I'm not saying we WON Florida, but I am saying it's absolute bullshit to see them reporting that we definitively lost it at this point. It's still too close to call.
The only thing I'm really worried about is how hard the Republicans flip out when the tallies switch with the absentee and early voting added in several days from now. It does take away some of the legitimacy of the election.
I still feel like Kerry can pull out Florida. Call me crazy, deluded, say I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, whatever. I don't buy that we know enough at this point to call it for Bush.
Ally