Video shows a postal worker dropping off mail ballots in Pennsylvania, not a ballot mule

A video of a postal worker delivering ballots to a Northampton County courthouse in Easton, Pennsylvania, has gone viral on social media, with some users falsely claiming he was committing election fraud.

The man in the video is not a ballot mule — someone who illegally collects and offloads ballots. He is a postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail ballots, United States Postal Service spokesperson Martha Johnson told PolitiFact.

Nevertheless, an Oct. 30 X post said, "Ballot mule in Northampton County, Pennsylvania drops off a large amount of ballots AFTER the office closes. Says he’s from the post office. Is this legal?" 

In the video, the person filming follows a man entering a building carrying a container. The person filming says, "Excuse me. How many ballots you turning in there? You’re supposed to only turn in one ballot per person."

The man doesn’t answer and places the container — which says "United States Postal Service" on the side and appears to contain mail ballots — on an X-ray machine’s conveyor belt.

The person filming asks, "Do you have an affidavit for all those?" A man off camera says the man with the ballots is with the post office. 

Another person off camera asks, "Who is he?" and the person filming replies, "I don’t know, apparently he’s with the post office, but that looks very suspect. There’s somebody here in Northampton County dropping off an obscene amount of ballots at the very last second after the office has actually closed."

The claim originated on an X account that posted the video Oct. 29, asking for help identifying the man with the ballots. That post had garnered 5.8 million views as of Nov. 1.

"Need help identifying this guy that just dropped off an insane amount of ballots who says he’s with the post office but (I don’t know) if I buy that. He wouldn’t talk to us and was acting very suspect," said the X user, whose profile says he’s a regional coordinator for Early Vote Action, a grassroots movement to register Republicans and encourage them to vote early. 

Conservative X accounts, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and MJTruthUltra, shared the video.

(Screenshots from X)

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Later posts named the person carrying the ballots and some people posted photos of a vehicle’s license plate, claiming the postal worker is from Rhode Island.

The camera zooms in on the man who dropped off the ballots, then a uniformed person enters the frame and takes the ballots.

Johnson, the Postal Service spokesperson, declined to name the worker in the video, but confirmed he is a postal employee. The man has been named in some news accounts, but PolitiFact is declining to name him to protect his safety and privacy. 

"We have a process for delivering Election Mail, including ballots, and our employee is following it," Johnson wrote in an email. "While this employee doesn’t wear a uniform or drive a postal vehicle in the normal course of his duties, he is a postal employee, and appropriately delivering those ballots."

Johnson pointed to an Oct. 23 Postal Service press release that details the agency’s "extraordinary" nationwide measures to ensure secure, quick mail ballot processing. Those measures include extra deliveries and local handling and transportation of mail ballots.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt referred to the video Oct. 31 near the end of his daily media briefing about the Nov. 5 election when he described mis- and disinformation being shared online.

"Another video shared widely yesterday that I saw showed an acting postmaster himself bringing mail ballots to the Northampton County election office, literally just delivering the mail," Schmidt said. "That video led to false allegations of ballot harvesting."

Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure replied from his X account to the original X post that asked for help identifying the man, saying, "We can help you. It's literally the postmaster."

McClure didn’t immediately return our request for comment, but told The Morning Call, an Allentown, Pennsylvania, newspaper, "What was occurring here was the most normal, legal thing imaginable." He also told the newspaper the building has many security cameras, so trying to commit fraud there would be "insanity."

Northampton County’s  Elections Department is inside the Easton courthouse where the postal worker dropped off the ballots.

An X post said a video shows a ballot mule dropping off "a large amount of ballots" in Northampton, Pennsylvania.

He’s no mule, a USPS spokesperson and Pennsylvania state and local officials said. He’s a postal worker doing his job and dropping off mail ballots at the courthouse, which houses the county’s elections department.

The claim is Pants on Fire!