Does a ballot count? These Florida boards decide

Holed up in a white rectangular room under the watchful eye of video monitors and lawyers for both political parties, the Miami-Dade County canvassing board is already scrutinizing — and sometimes

The Miami-Dade election department has already received more than 308,000 mail-in ballots — including about 3,400 that were flagged due to possible voter errors.

rejecting — irregular mailin ballots nearly two weeks before Election Day.

This month, the MiamiDade election department has received more than 308,000 vote-by-mail ballots — including about

3,400 with potential voter errors, such as ballot-envelope signatures that don’t match those on record. The flawed ballots, representing 1% of the county’s mail-in vote so far, are first reviewed by the election department’s staff to see if there is a fix, like contacting a voter to verify a signature.

A week into the process, the Miami-Dade canvassing board has rejected about 125 mail-in ballots. Ultimately, a stream of irregular ballots will wind up before the board, which will give a thumbs up or down on hundreds, probably thousands, of votes that could prove critical in what is expected to be a tight presidential race.

“The department has no authority to reject a ballot, only the canvassing board,” Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White told the Miami Herald before a board meeting Wednesday.

White sits on the board alongside two county judges, who will ultimately certify the vote count for every race after the Nov. 3 general election.

While their work is often done in obscurity, Florida’s 67 county canvassing