Video doesn’t show an election worker ripping ballots in a Pennsylvania county. They’re fake ballots

If you’re an election worker committing election fraud, you probably wouldn’t film yourself opening mail ballot envelopes, calling out the votes in those ballots, cursing against one candidate and ripping up ballots marked for that candidate.

But that’s what one viral video appears to show, leading X users to claim that mail ballots with votes for former President Donald Trump are being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

An Oct. 25 X post’s caption read, "Mail in ballots voting for Trump appear to be destroyed by this election registrar employee in Bucks County, Pennsylvania a major battleground State." PolitiFact also found other X posts dated Oct. 24 referring to this claim.

The video shows a person opening white envelopes marked "Official Election Mail," and then opening enclosed yellow envelopes marked "Official Election Ballot" and pulling out supposed ballots. If the ballot showed a vote for Trump, the person tore it into pieces while cursing the Republican presidential nominee. If the ballot showed a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, the person put it back in the envelopes.

The video also showed a green sticky note that said "Yardley Borough," which is in Bucks County.

(Screenshot from X)

There is no evidence this video shows an election worker destroying real ballots in Bucks County. The Bucks County Board of Elections was quick to debunk this video; it issued a bipartisan statement Oct. 24 saying, "This video is fake."

"The envelope and materials depicted in this video are clearly not authentic materials belonging to or distributed by the Bucks County Board of Elections," the statement read.

A video uploaded Sept. 17 by the Bucks County government Facebook page showed what the real mail ballots look like. At least two differences stand out between the envelopes shown in the video and the real envelopes used for mail ballots: the shade of green and the paper material.

(Screenshot from Bucks County government video; screenshot from X)

Bucks County spokesperson James O’Malley told PolitiFact each return envelope has a punch hole so election workers can see whether the yellow secrecy envelope is inside. "Under state law, we're not allowed to count a ballot if it does not arrive in the secrecy envelope," he said.

O’Malley pointed out that the envelopes in the fake video are glossy and the real ones are matte.

In its statement, the bipartisan Board of Elections — composed of two Democrats and one Republican — said, "This type of behavior is meant to sow division and distrust in our election systems, and makes a mockery of the people working incredibly hard to ensure a free and fair election is carried out.

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"The Board of Elections unequivocally condemns this purposeful spreading of dangerous disinformation," it said.

The Bucks County Republican Party also said "no employee at Bucks County Board of Election meets the description of the person in the video" and that no mail-in or absentee ballots have been opened.

The Bucks County district attorney’s office and the Yardley Borough police department said Oct. 24 that its investigation concluded the video was "fabricated in an attempt to undermine confidence in the upcoming election."

The district attorney’s office said it is in contact with the FBI, which aims to find the source of the "manufactured video."

Manuel Gamiz Jr., Bucks County district attorney’s office spokesperson, told PolitiFact that multiple inconsistencies led the office to conclude that the ballots in the video are fake, but did not want to reveal specifics and "inspire any copycats."

PolitiFact has not been able to trace the video’s origin or independently verify its authenticity. But experts believe it was not generated by artificial intelligence. 

"There is nothing in this video that has the characteristics or tell-tale signs of AI-generation," said Hany Farid, University of California, Berkeley, professor who specializes in digital forensics. "I suspect that this is simply staged."

Siwei Lyu, University at Buffalo professor and director of its Media Forensic Lab, said he knows of no public-domain generative AI model that creates the kind of believable hand movements as seen in the video.

"This video may be another example where the video is real, but the story is not," he said.

An anonymous federal official told USA Today that there are signs that the video may be part of a "massive Russian influence operation."

Darren Linvill, Clemson University communication professor and co-director of the Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub, posted Oct. 24 on X  that the narrative is the work of Russian network Storm-1516. In an email to PolitiFact, Linvill pointed out that the actor seems to have a West African accent, and Storm-1516 "routinely employs actors from the St. Petersburg (Russia) immigrant community."

Linvill said the most important tell that this is a Russian narrative was the source — X user TheWakeninq. The account is part of Storm’s distribution network, he said. TheWakeninq’s X post is now unavailable, but an archived post can be found here.

Linvill said this account was also the first to share the video of a supposed former student of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz alleging that Walz sexually harassed him. That video has been debunked. 

The video doesn’t show real mail ballots in Bucks County being destroyed. We rate that claim Pants on Fire!