A photo on social media sparked questions and outrage regarding election ballot security in Minnesota.

The photo taken at Edina City Hall on Friday shows a courier van with several sealed boxes of completed ballots left unattended with the tailgate open for up to eight minutes. As of Monday the photo had been viewed a half million times.

RELATED: Hennepin County courier fired after boxes of ballots left unattended for nearly 10 minutes in Edina

“What we saw there was completely and totally unacceptable,” says Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, the state’s chief election official.

In an interview with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS on Monday Simon did not hold back in his criticism of the courier company driver. “I was very upset when I saw it because all it takes is one bonehead to undo the good work of thousands and thousands of other people who are doing it the right way and the legal way,” he said.

According to Hennepin County officials, the driver was fired by his company, Smart Delivery, after the incident. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reached out to company officials to confirm, but we did not hear back.

“When something like this happens obviously we hate it,” Hennepin County Elections Director Ginny Gelms said in an online news conference with reporters on Monday. “It’s not up to our standards, and it’s not acceptable.”

Security video from Edina City Hall shows that no one approached the van or tampered with the ballot boxes while the driver was inside. However, Simon called it a “complete abandonment” of security protocols.

“This was a breach in protocol, and it has been dealt with, and I’ve been assured by our contractor that it won’t happen again going forward,” Gelms said.

Some have raised questions about why election judges from both major parties were not along while the ballots were transported. State election law only requires that on Election Day when ballots are transported, not in the pre-election period, according to Simon.

Hennepin County says despite the lapse in security, no ballots are missing or compromised.

“Every single ballot was accounted for,” Gelms said. “None of them were tampered with. We received every single ballot that we were supposed to, and we didn’t receive any ballots that we weren’t supposed to.”

Every early ballot cast is put in a security envelope with a unique code for the individual voter so if a ballot logged into the election system doesn’t show up the counties will know it. Every early voter can track their ballot to make sure it’s received and counted.