A Miami-Dade elections worker was fired after a sealed bin and a sealed bag of ballots fell out of their truck and were discovered on the side of the road, according to the county’s elections department.
The elections department called it a case of 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 sealed containers with the ballots inside had already been scanned and tabulated at the South Dade Regional Library’s early voting site on Monday, according to the Miami Herald.
A driver spotted the bin and bag with the ballots near 211 Street and the Turnpike Extension in Cutler Bay, according to a video posted by OnlyInDade.
If you’re in a swing state I encourage you to find a way to vote early, waiting for election day is an unnecessary risk. (A lot of places have in-person early voting, for example.)
If you’re not in a swing state, admittedly it matters a lot less what you do.
Yeah I’m in Ohio. We have two important votes, one of which (issue 1) is dead in the water because Frank LaRose maliciously changed the wording. But our attitude is that it’s not unlikely our state will try to throw out the early ballots.
Honestly, I don’t know the best course of action. This election is going really badly in regards to the overt interference from right wing authoritarians.
I think being afraid early ballots won’t be counted is just playing into their hand because it prevents you from voting early - they probably want as many people to wait for election day as possible so people will bail on extremely long lines, they can try to shut down polling locations, they probably hope that people have emergencies or other issues that prevent them from voting, etc.
This is just classic voter suppression.
EDIT: I also wanted to point out that Republicans are pushing early voting this year, so they are unlikely to throw out early ballots as a strategy (whereas that seemed like a strategy they were trying to pull in the past, hence the flip-flopping on whether to vote early when in the past they encouraged only voting on election day).
Either way: please, please guarantee your vote is counted, do not risk it.
I share your anger about LaRose’s blatant attempts to sabotage Issue 1, but that didn’t stop me from voting early and in-person. The line looked long, but moved quickly and I was on my way home in 30 or 40 minutes.
We only lose if we don’t vote! If you can vote early, I would encourage you to do so!