State no longer a laughingstock

How Florida bucked its reputation for voting mishaps and slow results with a quick turnaround this year.

Floridians are watching this year’s election drama from the sidelines, repeatedly hitting the refresh button and waiting for votes to trickle in from battleground states.

The Sunshine State bucked its reputation for voting mishaps and slow results.

Other key states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — will determine whether President Donald Trump or his Democratic rival Joe Biden wins the White House.

Florida reported its vote tally quickly after the polls closed at 7 p.m. on Election Day. Fox News was the first major news outlet to call the race for Trump at 11:05 p.m. Tuesday, and some political observers wondered why the state wasn’t called even earlier.

Associated Press called the race at 12:34 a.m. Wednesday.

Here are some reasons why Florida was able to deliver speedier results and avoid chaos.

Pre- Election Day processing: Florida election officials could start processing mail ballots 22 days before the election. That meant much of the work had already been done when polls closed. Other states have different laws on this. Pennsylvania couldn’t start processing mail ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. The Trump campaign and its allies blocked efforts to allow mail ballots to be processed earlier in Pennsylvania.

Experience: Florida has more experience handling mail ballots, which surged in popularity this year because of the pandemic. In the 2016 election, nearly 2.7 million Floridians cast mail ballots, compared with about 262,800 in Pennsylvania. Florida is often the butt of jokes, but its election officials are used to high-stakes, close elections that require the processing of large numbers of votes.

Deadlines: Domestic mail ballots in Florida must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. That means ballots that arrive after that deadline won’t be counted. That’s not the case in other states, which means it will take longer to tally the results. Nevada mail ballots are counted if they are post marked by Election Day and received no later than seven days after the election. Mail ballots in Pennsylvania are accepted if they are post marked on Election Day and received no later than three days after the election.

Trump’s win: Trump won in a blowout by Florida standards, beating Biden by more than 370,000 votes. That was well outside the margin thatwould trigger a recount.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted of his state’s success counting votes during a news conference Wednesday in Tall a has see.

“The way Florida did it, I think that inspires confidence,” DeSantis said. “I think that’s how elections should be run. ... People are actually looking at Florida and asking the question: ‘Why can’t these states be more like Florida?’”

Hep raised Republicanelection supervisors in Broward and

Palm Beach counties, who he said did a better job than the Democrats who were removed from office.

Susan MacManus, a longtime Florida political observer, gave high marks to elections officials.

“Please no longer refer to The Sunshine State as “Flori-duh!” when it comes to running an election,” she wroteon Twitter. “Congrats to our 67 county election supervisors and their staffs for running a smooth election.”