This isn’t a photo of North Carolina ballots cast for Republicans that a postal worker will destroy

An image of U.S. postal service boxes with green papers that say "ballot" in the bed of a truck are drawing attention again, four years after they first spread on social media. 

"For my next trick, I’m going to make all these Donald Trump and Mark Robinson ballots disappear. Happy #ElectionDay #NCPol," reads a screenshot of an X post that refers to Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for the state. 

"This man is a postal worker in NC," a Nov. 5 Instagram post sharing the screenshot said. "Not even a little bit afraid of this! Who put him up to this?"

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The X post was published Nov. 5 by @garfshots, an anonymous account that typically posts about sports. This post drew 42,000 views and hundreds of likes and reposts in a matter of hours, NewsGuard said.

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We don’t know whether the person behind the account is a postal worker, as the Instagram post claims. 

We do know the photo doesn’t show North Carolina ballots — or any ballots in the 2024 election. 

The image is old, and it was cropped to cut out Barbara Thompson, then the town clerk of Wallingford, Connecticut. 

Record-Journal photographer Dave Zajac took the photo Oct. 2, 2020. It shows Thompson readying to bring "nearly 7,000 absentee ballots to the post office from Wallingford Town Hall," the photo caption said. It was the first day ballots could be mailed out for the 2020 general election. 

We rate claims it shows North Carolina ballots cast for Trump and Robinson in the 2024 election False.