Yeah, he'd scare me away from voting, too.

Wednesday’s Gainesville Sun provides details from a report prepared for the state of Florida that informs us that the 2010 gubernatorial race featured a much higher rate of undervotes than in the previous election cycle. While only 0.86 percent of ballots in 2006 had no vote for governor, the 2010 race saw that figure jump to 1.49 percent. The rate for traditionally Republican absentee voters not casting a vote for governor was even higher.

It turns out that the number of non-votes exceeded Scott’s margin of victory in the race:

Scott narrowly beat Sink by nearly 62,000 votes. But more than 81,000 voters skipped the race altogether.

Absentee votes in Florida traditionally break in favor of Republicans due the large number of conservative retirees who travel extensively. This population appears to have been particularly turned off by Governor Scottdemort:

He [Democratic strategist Steve Schale] noted, for example, that more absentee voters — traditionally a stalwart of GOP campaigns — left the governor’s race blank. The state report shows that 2 percent — or double the amount in 2006 — skipped the governor’s race.

There is no reason to suspect that foul play, rather than voters (especially Republican voters) being turned off by the vile campaign and its eventual winner:

“No evidence exists to suggest that one or more tabulators negatively or significantly affected the data,” the report to the Florida Legislature stated.

But Scottdemort has a plan for dealing with a state that began turning away from him even during his election, and so he threw a Tea Party to announce his budget plans:

The new Republican governor reached out to tea-party organizers to host a budget-rollout event Monday in Eustis, a rural heartland town about 190 miles from the state Capitol, where governors traditionally unveil their spending proposals.

The event underscores Scott’s likely commitment to propose a budget with large cuts in spending, fees and taxes — a proposal that has been met with skepticism by legislators, who aren’t sure how to slash up to $2 billion in taxes and fees while the state faces a shortfall that could top $4 billion next budget year.

But calling for less government spending and revenue is like serving sugar, milk and crumpets to the tea party, an amorphous conservative-leaning movement that fired up the Republican base in the last election.

It’s time for us Floridians to brace ourselves, because the stupidity and duplicity flowing out of Tallahassee is only going to increase with this criminal in office.