Russia is behind fake ballot video, U.S. officials say : NPR

Director of the Board of Elections Tyler Burns holds a test ballot during a mail-in ballot processing demonstration at the Board of Elections office on September 30, 2024 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. A fake video purporting to show ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pa., showed different envelopes and ballots than the county actually uses.

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Hannah Beier/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

Russia manufactured and spread a fake video that purports to show someone destroying ballots marked for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials said on Friday.

A general view to the Kremlin towers and Ivan the Great cathedral in May 2024. U.S. intelligence officials say Russia was behind an attempt to spread baseless claims about Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

The phony video was quickly debunked by local election officials and the district attorney’s office in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. But it still circulated widely on social media, including Elon Musk’s X, where it racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement.

Russian propagandists have also created fake videos targeting Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Russian navy recruits perform with the Russian flag in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 4 during a ceremony marking the departure of recruits to join the army.

The purported Bucks County video shows a person’s hands opening envelopes and removing and examining the ballots inside. The person rips up ballots marked for Trump, cursing at the former president, while leaving ballots marked for Vice President Kamala Harris alone. “Vote Harris,” the voice says at one point.

But the envelopes and ballots shown are not what the county uses to vote, the Bucks County Board of Elections said.

The video was posted by an X account that last week shared another video making false accusations against Walz, which intelligence officials have also attributed to Russia. The account has also promoted the baseless QAanon conspiracy theory.

Military musicians perform in Moscow's Red Square on Sept. 1. Researchers at Microsoft say Russia is pivoting its online influence operations to focus on Vice President Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, in the final stretch of the election.

Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, traced the Bucks County video back to a Russian propaganda operation known as “Storm-1516”, first identified by Clemson, which is known for its tactic of producing staged videos that it then launders through influencers and phony news outlets.

“The particular video about Bucks County came from an account that we were familiar with,” Linvill said. “It has originated Storm-1516 narratives before.”

He said the operation has consistent “tells” including a focus on wedge issues, the use of particular actors, and “stylistic elements of their videos that suggest to us that these things certainly aren’t authentic.”

Microsoft has said the same Russian Storm-1516 operation was also behind a staged video falsely accusing Harris of injuring someone in a hit-and-run in 2011, which was spread via a website claiming to be a local San Francisco TV station. There is no evidence any such incident occurred, and the purported TV station does not exist.

NPR’s Miles Parks contributed reporting to this story.