I hope he does hard time, lots of it.
It may not have been him. They arrested him because they determined that the mail would have been from his route.
However, I have seen postal trucks left unattended while the postman was walking part of the route. Someone could have grabbed a handful of mail including the ballots and put them in the trash.
On the second thread on this topic I challenged Freepers to figure out if these areas are predominantly Democrat or Republican.