MIAMI - The Miami-Dade County Elections Department issued a statement Tuesday after a video showed a sealed bin and bag of early voting ballots were found lying in the middle of the road after falling out the back of a moving truck.
"The incident that occurred was due to human error. The worker forgot to lock the back of the truck and as they drove off, one sealed bin and one sealed bag fell out, containing already voted ballots from early voting," the department said.
The incident began after an election worker left the South Dade Regional Library after early voting concluded on Monday night. The ballot boxes then fell out of the moving truck near the intersection of 211th Street in Cutler Bay before reaching election headquarters.
In the video, an unidentified man is seen stopping his car in the street and retrieving the bin and bag from the middle of the road. After picking up the items, the man took the ballot boxes to a nearby Miami-Dade County Police Department.
After filing a police report, the man is thanked for returning the ballots. It is unclear how many ballots were inside the bin and bag.
According to the elections department, election staff verified the ballot seals, and none were deemed tampered with or damaged. The ballots were then taken to election headquarters where the items were accounted for and the seals were again verified.
According to Christina White, Supervisor of Elections for Miami-Dade, the fallen ballots were the paper record of the vote a voter casts on the machine.
“Those ballots were already tabulated so those actually become the backup record for the election. The results have already been captured. So I want any voter that voted at that location to know that their votes are already in the system. They will be uploaded on election night and they should feel confident in the overall system,” White said.
While confirmed as a mistake, the election worker was ultimately fired. The elections department noted having "zero tolerance" as reasoning for the employee's termination.
Early voting in Miami-Dade County began on Oct. 21st and runs through Nov. 3rd. The general election is on Nov. 5.
