ABOUT FOUR HOURS after the polls closed on Election Day, the major TV networks and the Associated Press declared a winner in the crucially important and always bitterly contested state of Florida.
And that was it.
There were no takebacks. No corrections. No recounts. No need for the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court. Other aspects of the 2020 presidential election would carry on chaotically for weeks, then months, as partisans agonized over inperson vote tallies, mail-in ballots, and state-level certifications of official results. But in Florida—yes, Florida—the election could hardly have gone more smoothly.
That’s not usually notable. We expect states to handle elections and compute the results with minimal fuss and chaos. The electoral system is, in some sense, the most fundamental aspect of a democratic government—one that, when it fails, puts into jeopardy everything else that government might aspire to do and be.
That’s why the 2000 presidential election in Florida is infamous. For five weeks, the inability to determine who had won the state’s electoral votes—and with them, the presidency—laid bare just how contingent this whole democracy thing can be.
There was a silver lining to that calamitous moment. In the months after the news cameras turned away from Florida’s election officials, then-Gov. Jeb Bush pushed for changes that would hopefully ensure there’d never be a repeat performance. With the experience of the 2000 election constantly hanging over the state, Florida’s leaders have made running smooth elections a point of pride. The state has been at the forefront of policy changes that make it easier for residents to vote and easier for officials to tabulate the results.
It all came together in 2020. More than 11 million people voted in Florida that year—only California and Texas had more ballots to count. Incredibly, 93 percent of that total was publicly reported by 9:30 p.m. on November 3, just 90 minutes after polls had closed across the state. (National media outlets, perhaps burned by prior
