An election worker has been fired after a ballot box was discovered in the middle of a road in the US, days out from the high-stakes election, writes news.com.au.

Dashcam footage shared on Instagram shows the moment a sealed bright blue election box and a sealed bag of ballots were spotted by a driver in Cutler Bay, Florida on Tuesday, local time.

In the footage, the driver can be seen stopping his car and retrieving the ballots from the middle of the road, before taking them to a local police station. The box was clearly marked with a sticker reading “official election materials” along with a serial number.

“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,” Instagram account ‘Only in Dade’ wrote on social media. “He immediately picked them up and took them to the police station, where they have been properly secured.”

In a statement, the Miami-Dade County Elections Department said it was aware of the incident, which it attributed 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. Thankfully, this was observed in real time by upstanding citizens who did the right thing and turned the bin and bag into the police department”.