Over 33,000 absentee ballots have been mailed to Escambia voters

Absentee ballots are available upon request, Supervisor of Elections David Stafford told Inweekly yesterday. Over 33,000 absentee ballots have been sent out as of Tuesday, July 24.

“They go out in two waves,” he said. “The first is the military and overseas ballots. They went out at the 46-day mark. Then the non-military and overseas ballots went out yesterday. Then as we continue to process requests we send those out on a daily basis. If we get a request today, they’re usually sent out with the next day’s mail.”

This process continues until the request deadline, which is the Wednesday before the Tuesday election (August 22).

“We’ve got a total of 160 (absentee ballots) that have come back today (July 25),” he said. “That number obviously will change when each day’s mail is returned, and not all of them (the ballots) will come back for whatever reasons, but again that number will continue to grow.”

The number of ballots mailed could be an indication of a larger than normal mid-term primary turnout. The last two mid-term primaries had 33,662 total voters in 2014 and 49,963 in 2010.