'Early Voting Helped Tremendously', Miami-Dade Election Supervisor Christina White On Lack Of Delays In Election Results

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Florida got it right.

No, we're not talking about who won and who lost in the 2020 General Election. Rather, in a state made famous for election foul-ups, voters voted, voters were counted, winners were declared from the top of the ticket to the bottom in a timely manner.

Other states, however, are still counting. How come?

"We are used to processing 'Vote-by-Mail ballots. We understand how the process works. The governor also extended through an executive order the number of days we could begin pre-counting," said political analyst Steve Vancore, president of VancoreJones Communications.

Florida 'Vote-by-Mail' has been on the books for a while but it was not a big factor until this year when COVID hit and Democrats pushed to bank votes early.

"Take Broward County. Every day when those ballots came in, the Broward County Supervisor was going out to post offices and bringing in those ballots in the last five days," said Vancore.

Speaking of Broward County, where vote counts and elections failures were often national news, an interim election supervisor appointed by the governor made things right by tightening procedures with a staff pretty much retained from the previous administration.

"I have a tremendous staff and through them, things happened as they should have happened," said Broward Supervisor of Elections Peter Antonacci.

Miami-Dade continued its run of getting the job done. 'Vote-by-Mail' ballots and in-person early votes were counted early and fed into computers with the Election Day numbers. They were able to tally their results before the end of the night.

"Early voting helped tremendously. I think voters took our advice, they did everything early. They got their vote in early by mail ballot and early voting. Election Day ended up being rather on the slow side which is interesting for a presidential election, everything turned out great," said Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White.

So as a number of other states scramble to wrap their count in this historic election, Florida voters should give their election offices, and themselves, a pat on the back.

"We should be proud of it. We learned from our past mistakes. We adapted, we changed. We invested in the resources necessary to run a safe and secure, well-done election," said Vancore.

Because of the efficiency in counting the early vote and 'Vote-by-Mail counts, the 2020 Florida election results for president were called at 12:35 a.m. Wednesday morning.