According to the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, the now-terminated election worker failed to secure the back of the truck carrying the containers with completed ballots. The containers, a blue box and a sealed bag, fell along a Florida road and were discovered by a passing driver near Turnpike in Cutler Bay, Florida. The total number of ballots affected remains unknown.
The driver, whose identity has not been disclosed, recorded the incident on video and shared it with citizen journalism group Only in Dade, where it quickly gained attention on social media. The video shows the driver collecting the containers and delivering them to a nearby police station.
Ivan Castro, the elections media manager for Miami-Dade County, confirmed that elections staff swiftly retrieved the ballot containers from the Miami-Dade Police Department. Upon inspection, officials verified that all seals remained intact and no ballots appeared tampered with or damaged.
"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. While unintentional, the Elections Department has zero tolerance for error and therefore, the employee was terminated," Castro said while thanking the "upstanding residents who did the right thing" by bringing the ballots to the police station.
Mail-in ballot-related incidents are happening across the country
The Florida incident is not the first time issues have occurred with early voting ballots.
On Oct. 28, hundreds of ballots were set on fire at ballot drop boxes in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington due to incendiary devices attached to the ballot boxes. Portland Police Bureau Assistant Chief Amanda McMillan believed that the incidents were connected and were likely intentional.
"We do know that acts like this are targeted and they're intentional, and we’re concerned about that intentional act trying to affect the election process. We're dedicated to stopping that kind of behavior and we're working toward that today."
Fortunately, a fire suppression device installed in each ballot drop box functioned as intended. "The good news is the fire suppression devices inside the box extinguished any fire almost immediately," said Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey. "There were only three ballots that were in the box out of hundreds that had any damage whatsoever and we were able to clearly read the voters' names on those ballots, so we will be reaching out directly to those that were impacted."
In Arizona, police arrested a suspect following an arson incident that damaged at least 20 mail-in ballots in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox in Phoenix. (Related: U.S. Postal Service refusing to disclose who paid for nine trucks that transferred up to 1.5 million counterfeit election ballots in 2020.)
Meanwhile, in another incident in Florida, a postal worker faces criminal charges after allegedly discarding over 1,000 pieces of mail, including more than 400 political mail items and at least one election ballot, in a wooded area in Orlando. California has also seen election-related incidents, including burglaries at two post offices in Sacramento County where ballots, laptops and other mail items were stolen.
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Watch this clip from Newsmax featuring Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) predicting that Pennsylvania is "ready to turn red in 2024."
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