Election Worker Fired After 'Upstanding Citizens' Spot Ballot Bin Blunder
A box of processed ballots fell off of a truck and laid on a Miami-Dade County road Monday night.
Somewhere between 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., after early voting was completed at the South Dade Regional Library, a sealed box and a sealed bag fell off a truck, according to WPLG.
The Miami-Dade Elections Department said the rear door of the truck in which the ballots were being transported was not locked, allowing the objects to fall into the street.
Video posted to X showed that the bag and box were retrieved from the street and taken to the police.
Last night, an individual came across a box full of ballots and other documents on exit 11 of the Turnpike, at the intersection of 211th St. in Cutler Bay. He immediately picked them up and took them to the police station, where they have been properly secured. No information yet… pic.twitter.com/HQP6glsm9b
— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) October 29, 2024
“It was an unfortunate human error on the part of one of our workers,” Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White said.
“When they were pulling out of one of our early voting locations last night, they are charged with bringing back voted ballot bins and other election material to elections headquarters, and unfortunately, they just forgot to lock the back of the truck. And so, when they were pulling out of the early voting site, the door opened, and one ballot bin and one bag had fallen out of the truck.”
White said there was no intent to cause an election issue.
“The employee was absolutely distraught over it, but in the elections field, we have zero tolerance for error. All our procedures were reiterated to all of our workers who do this job,” she said, adding “This is the first time we have had anything like this happen.”
White praised the people who found the ballots and turned the containers over to police.
“We were very fortunate that there were upstanding residents that happened to see this unfold, and they did the responsible thing and turned it into the local Miami-Dade Police Department,” White said.
“There were seals on both the bin and the bag, so we were able to confirm here that they were intact… and there were no contents inside that were either damaged or tampered with,” she said.
The Miami-Dade Elections, in a statement, called the witnesses “upstanding citizens” who “did the right thing.”
White said the ballots were heading for storage.
“These represented the ballots that went into one of those units,” she said. “That ballot is put in there, the votes are tabulated and counted, and so the paper ballots fall into a bin. And at the end of each night, we close up the bins, we seal them up, and we bring them back to the elections department.”
“I want to put voters’ minds at ease that their votes were counted, they were cast and counted accurately,” she said.
“The employee was absolutely distraught over it, but in the elections field, we have zero tolerance for error. All our procedures were reiterated to all of our workers who do this job,” she added.
The sealed bag contained a provisional ballot.
“This was just another bag that had a provisional ballot, one provisional ballot in it, that would come back and be reviewed for accuracy and eligibility to determine whether or not we are going to accept it,” White said.
Voter Orlando Puche said trust in the system is paramount, according to WSVN.
“We expect that everyone will do their job and everything and everybody will be counted for these elections,” he said.
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