(Tallahassee, FL) — Two weeks after the 2020 Presidential Election, Florida is ready to make its election results official. Meanwhile, ballots are still being counted and recounted in other states.
The state of Florida is able to certify the results from the 2020 Election today because there are no legal battles or drama surrounding the certification process.
Voters in Palm Beach County filled out paper ballots rather than voting via computer with questionable software. The paper ballot also allows for officials to tangibly see the voter’s intent.
President Donald Trump carried the state, winning by more than 370,000 votes out of 11 million ballots cast.
Approximately 5.6 million people cast their vote for Trump in Florida and 5.2 million voted for former Vice President Joe Biden. It was a record voter turnout.
The state legislature will remain dominated by Republicans for the next two years with the GOP holding a 24-16 advantage in the Florida Senate. The advantage in the Florida House of Representatives is even greater with Republicans holding a 78-42 advantage among 120 representatives. The GOP picked up two U.S. Congressional seats, and five seats in the Florida House of Representatives.
President Trump beat Joe Biden, 51-to-48-percent to pick up the state’s 29 electoral votes.
The remaining one-percent of the vote was split by five third-party candidates.
Election officials say the fact that the election ran smoothly in Florida was not by accident.
“We put in a lot of hard work, planning, and actually trying to predict what kind of scenarios we might have,” said Mark Early, Leon County Supervisor of Elections. “We put in the contingencies and got all that stuff in place so that it would be a success and go very smoothly.”
In Florida, mail-in ballots and early voting are counted ahead of time then posted as soon as polls close. Unfortunately, other states had to wait to start counting everything until after the polls closed, so results take longer to report.
Florida’s election success comes after years of elections problems in 2000 and 2018. Now, the Sunshine State is the gold standard in how to run an election.