More than half of Sumter County voters participating in the 2014 general election could cast their ballots by early voting or mail.
The numbers are somewhat lower in Lake and Marion counties. Early voting ends Saturday, Nov. 1, and the general election is Tuesday, Nov. 4.
With two days of early voting left, statistics on the Sumter County elections web site showed that 22,373 voters took advantage of early voting while 13,034 cast absentee ballots by mail.
Those figures represent about 42 percent of all registered voters, but likely will be more than half of the eventual turnout. In 2010, the last mid-term election headlined by a U.S. Senate race, 42,447 county voters went to the polls while 60,775 voted in the 2012 presidential election.
While early voting has been more popular than mail in Sumter County, voters appear to favor mail in Marion County, where 30,456 cast absentee ballots and 16,347 took advantage of early voting. About 22 percent of Marion County’s 216,012 registered voters had cast ballots by one of these methods through Thursday.
Lake County has had an even split between mail and early votes. While 22,812 voters have taken advantage of early voting so far, 22,596 cast mail ballots, according to elections supervisor Emogene Stegall. Those figures represent about 22 percent of the county’s 207,328 registered voters.
Stegall said she doesn’t see a major increase this year in early or mail voting.
“It’s about the same as other off-year elections,” she said.
