Absentee Explosion In Florida

If there's a race, they will vote -- even if there are no delegates.

For Democrats, the number of returned absentee ballots in Florida so far exceeds the total number turned in in the 2004 general election, and the number of Democratic early voters plus the number of absentees requested is more than the number of actual voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada combined.

This means that despite the fact that NO Democrat is campaigning in Florida, no Democrat is advertising in Florida (except on cable) and the DNC is ignoring Florida, Democratic voters in Florida are organically excited about the primary race and their party's prospects for November, 2008 -- and are voting despite the temporal meaningless of their vote. That's pretty impressive... and it also poses a philosophical quandary: if a million Democrats vote next Tuesday in a meaningless primary, did they actually vote? What does the media say about them? What if one candidate wins by a large margin?

The state Democratic Party says that 96,286 absentee ballots have been returned, up from 93,909 in 2004. 100,000 ballots have yet to be returned. Combining the number of early voters (121,693) with the number of absentees requested, you get 316,940 -- more than the total Democratic vote for each of the three early states.

The party projects a turnout of more than 1,000,000.