Another hurricane heading for Florida?

Is it possible that registered Democrats, voting overwhelmingly for Kerry in all states, chose to turn pink and eventually red under the glare of the Florida sun? How could Bush have carried, by large margins no less, these Democratic counties? Is it another instance of our endlessly squabbling over return numbers (that have been turned in and tallied) because they produced a result we cannot accept? Perhaps it is more that we cannot fathom this one.

Tom Bozzo writes this at Marginal Utility:

I can think of some potential explanatory mechanisms -- stale party ID on old registrations, incompetent reporting of the registration data by the State of Florida, more evangelical-leaning Democrats, for instance -- but on the whole, the idea that Democrats largely stuck by Kerry (89 to 11, according to the exit polls; sorry, Ann Althouse) everywhere but Florida takes my credulity and drops it down a wormhole where it emerges in the Gamma Quadrant in no recognizable form.

Interestingly, the issue is with counties using optically-scanned ballots, which is generally considered the most reliable available voting technology. Though as a result, the optical scan jurisdictions would be under much less scrutiny than those using touch-screen voting. At least it should be straightforward, in principle, to validate the vote totals from the original ballots; I fervently hope someone with appropriate legal resources does so (hello, Florida Democrats)!