Florida electors cast 29 votes for Trump, but new Senate president sidelined by COVID
Florida’s presidential election wrapped up with little fanfare Monday after the state’s 29 Republican electors cast their votes for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
Meeting in the Senate chambers in the Capitol, the 29 GOP lawmakers, donors and current and former party officials spent an hour casting their electoral college votes. Despite winning Florida, Trump lost the overall presidential race to former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, with his 4-year-old daughter Madison in his lap, watched as the electors signed their choices for president and vice president, which were then counted by staffers and the results announced.
“Let the record reflect Donald J. Trump received 29 electoral votes for president of the United States,” Secretary of State Laurel Lee said, to mild applause.
The state’s GOP electors included Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez, new Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, future Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, and Republican Party Chairman Joe Gruters, a senator from Sarasota.
Typically nothing more than a formality every four years, the meeting of each state’s presidential electors on Monday was closely watched after Trump and his surrogates — including DeSantis and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody — spent the last 41 days trying to discredit the results in several states that voted for Biden. All state electors cast their ballots Monday, which will be counted by the U.S. Congress when it meets in joint session on Jan. 6.
Lee, the state’s top elections official who was appointed by DeSantis, presided over Monday’s count and repeated assurances that Florida’s 2020 election was safe and fair.
“Florida ensured a safe and efficient voting process,” Lee said, “and all Florida voters, no matter how they chose to cast a ballot, or who they voted for, could be confident in the integrity of our elections system and the security of their vote.”
In Florida, the pandemic forced the meeting to be closed to the public, and electors had to be tested for COVID-19 before entering the Capitol. News media were allowed to watch from the Senate gallery.
The electors were encouraged to wear masks during the meeting, but many removed them as they walked to the front of the Senate chambers to sign their names on the state’s six election certificates, which formalized the vote. One certificate will be sent to Pence, two to the national archives, one to U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee and two to the Florida Secretary of State.
The coronavirus tests forced one of the 29 electors, Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, to drop out after he tested positive for the coronavirus Sunday night.
“It was a great honor to be selected to serve our state in this historic capacity, and I was very much looking forward to casting my vote for President Trump and Vice President Pence,” he wrote in a letter to DeSantis Monday morning.
Simpson, who was formally chosen as Senate president last month, is the most high-profile state lawmaker known to test positive for the virus. Senate spokeswoman Katie Betta said Simpson was feeling OK, with symptoms similar to allergies or a “slight head cold.”
Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, was chosen as his replacement at the beginning of the ceremony.
Florida’s 29 electoral college votes were some of the most sought-after in the election, with polls predicting a tight race in the perennial battleground state. There was widespread speculation that Florida would face recounts and legal challenges if the race was close, with flashbacks of the dreaded 2000 election, which George W. Bush won by just 537 votes following five weeks of legal challenges.
But Trump won his new home state by 3.3 percentage points, a landslide by Florida standards, and the election went smoothly. Instead, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan — states that Trump won four years ago, but flipped for Biden this time — became the focus of legal challenges and Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results.
In Florida, each party and candidate for president submits a list of electors, who must vote for their respective party’s nominee. (You can see the Democratic electors who would have been casting votes had Biden won Florida here.)
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 3:43 PM.