Board of Elections Director Tyler Barnes casts a test vote during a demonstration of mail-in ballot processing at the Board of Elections office in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on September 30, 2024. A fake video purporting to show ballots being discarded in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, showed different envelopes and ballots than the ones actually used by the county. Hannah Baier/Getty Images/Getty Images North America Hide Caption
Toggle caption Hannah Baier/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Russia created and distributed a fake video purporting to show someone destroying a ballot marked for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials said Friday.
The fake video was quickly debunked by local election officials and the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, district attorney’s office. However, it still spread widely on social media, including Elon Musk’s “X,” which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said, “This Russian activity raises unfounded questions about the integrity of U.S. elections and is part of Russia’s broader efforts to incite division among Americans.” It is part of the.” said in a joint statement.
Russian propagandists also created a fake video targeting Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
A video purportedly from Bucks County shows a person manually opening the envelope and removing and examining the ballot inside. The individual left only the ballot marked for Vice President Kamala Harris and tore up the ballot marked for President Trump, cursing the former president. At one point a voice could be heard saying, “Vote for Harris.”
However, the Bucks County Board of Elections said the envelopes and ballots shown were not the ones the county would use to vote.
The video was posted by the X account, which last week shared another video making false accusations against Walz, which intelligence officials have also attributed to Russia. The account also promoted the baseless QAanon conspiracy theory.
Darren Linville, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, traced the Bucks County video to a Russian propaganda operation known as “Storm-1516.” Clemson University, known for its tactics of producing staged videos, was the first to identify a Russian propaganda operation later dubbed Storm 1516. Laundering money through influencers and fake news organizations.
“The particular video about Bucks County was from an account that we are familiar with,” Linville said. “It has spawned the Storm-1516 story before.”
He said the strategy involved consistent “testimonials,” including a focus on wedge issues, the use of specific actors, and “stylistic elements in the video that suggest these things are certainly not real.” He said there is.
Microsoft said the same Russian Storm-1516 operation was behind a staged video that falsely accused Harris of injuring someone in a hit-and-run in 2011, which also aired on a local San Francisco television station. It was spread through a website claiming to be There is no evidence that such an incident ever occurred, and the alleged television station does not exist.
NPR’s Miles Parks contributed reporting to this story.
