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.
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.