October 15, 2021
When it comes to elections, Florida is the model to follow, and President Trump agrees!
During the Evander Holyfield-Vitor Belfort promotional fight, President Trump praised Florida’s 2020 elections, saying “Florida has been great. And they ran the election clean and that’s very important.”
Earlier this week, Governor DeSantis was asked about an election audit in Florida and our Governor made it clear that Florida is the gold standard of elections with results that were quickly and efficiently tabulated. Florida has already audited the election, in fact, Florida law requires an automatic audit in all 67 counties, and the results are open to the public.
“What we do in Florida is, there’s a pre- and post-election audit that happens automatically,” DeSantis said, in an article published by News Service of Florida. “So, that has happened. It passed with flying colors.”
Florida law requires that after every election, an audit is automatically conducted in every county. This audit is open to the public.
Amongst the election reforms Governor DeSantis and the Republican legislature put in the books is ensuring voter ID not only for in-person voting but when requesting a VBM too, making sure there is no ballot-harvesting and going forward, VBM drop boxes must be staffed at all times to ensure the integrity of the ballots deposited.
Assuring voters that election integrity will be upheld has been of significant concern for Governor DeSantis who replaced two disgraced supervisors of elections in Broward and Palm Beach counties in the first month of his administration. Other states should follow Florida’s lead.
President Trump put out the following statement this week regarding the country’s 2020 election.
Florida is the model to follow when it comes to election integrity. We are very proud of the great work that Republicans in Florida are doing to ensure that this remains so. We would hope that the numerous states that showed election irregularities would follow Florida’s lead.
While running a clean election is key, our enormous victory in November 2020 was made possible by the efforts of Florida Republicans and our grassroots organization–we surpassed expectations from the “experts”, pollsters and punditry class.
The impressive results reflected a great Republican team effort in the Sunshine state which saw record numbers of volunteers knocking on doors, making phone calls, putting up signs and donating– showing patriotic support in numerous ways. Headlines reluctantly had to reflect that Florida is no longer a swing state and Florida sees Red everywhere.
A few key decisions helped pave the way toward victory: investing in on-the-ground field staff to enhance GOTV, and a robust voter registration effort that was propelled by Governor DeSantis which narrowed the gap between registered Republicans to Democrats to a historic low. Additionally, under Governor DeSantis’ leadership and commitment by the Florida Republican legislature this past Legislative Session, Florida further strengthened statutes related to election integrity helping ensure that our laws continue to be a model for the country.
For example, the Legislature amended the law to allow for more time for pre-canvassing of vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots prior to the election—codifying the extended time Governor DeSantis provided to supervisors of elections in 2020 through Executive Order. Without this extra time to count VBM ballots, Florida would have been like other states where VBM ballots were still being counted weeks after the election.
As a result of our great efforts, President Trump duly won the state of Florida and all 29 electoral votes. We flipped two congressional seats in Miami Dade county, picked up five state House seats and two open seats that had been held by Democrats. Republicans also defeated Amendment 3 that would have turned our primary system into California’s and would have caused Florida irreparable harm.
We are proud of all we’ve accomplished and our momentum continues–we are 23,000 Republican voters away from taking the advantage and flipping Florida’s voter registration RED.
Thanks to your hard work the Sunshine State is the model to follow for the rest of the nation!
Thank you,
Chairman Joe Gruters
Republican Party of Florida