No, this video doesn’t show ‘illegal voters cutting the line’ in Pennsylvania

In the 2024 election’s final days, social media users are claiming buses of noncitizens are being sent to polling locations in the swing state of Pennsylvania to sway the election for Vice President Kamala Harris.

A video out of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, the state’s second most populous county, misrepresented a lawful situation as unlawful.

An Oct. 29 Instagram post shared a video of a group of about a dozen people walking up to a polling center, past a line of people waiting to vote, and talking with someone who appeared to be an election official.

A second video in the post showed a man talking about the group, claiming the people were "all foreigners." The man said the group was able to skip the hourslong voting line.

"Illegal ‘voters’ cutting the line. Look at this BS in Pennsylvania," read text above the two videos in the Instagram post that would misspell buses. "Busses of non-English speaking ‘citizens’ are guided past Americans who had been waiting in line for hours to cast their early votes. These people, all wearing Harris-Walz stickers, were directed through the voting process by a handful of ‘translators.’"

(Screenshot from Instagram)

Other Instagram posts also shared the videos, which were 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.)

Billionaire Elon Musk and InfoWars creator Alex Jones amplified the videos on X.

Only U.S. citizens may register to vote and cast ballots in federal, state and local elections in Pennsylvania. The videos circulating online provide no evidence that the people in question are not eligible voters.

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on November 21, 2024 in Facebook posts

“Taylor Swift has moved to Canada after leaving the U.S. following the big red wave.”

The X user who appeared to first share the videos Oct. 27 said they were taken at the South Park Ice Rink in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

Allegheny County officials addressed the videos in an Oct. 30 statement.

"There was a group of voters on Saturday, Oct. 26, at the South Park Satellite Election Office who came to apply for mail-in ballots and needed the assistance of translators. There was brief conversation between voters, their translators, and a County employee that was videotaped and is circulating on the internet," the statement said.

The county said the employee provided instructions that older and disabled people in the group could sit while they waited for their applications to be processed. This is standard procedure for any voter needing accommodation.

"The able-bodied voters returned to the back of the line, elderly and disabled voters were permitted to sit and wait their turn, and those who needed the assistance of a translator were able to use their translator to help them through the process," the county said.

Pennsylvania’s voter registration deadline was Oct. 21, so anyone who requested a mail-in ballot after that date would have received a ballot only if they were already registered, the county said.

In an Oct. 30 press briefing, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt urged the public to be wary of mis- and disinformation related to the 2024 election.

"Over the past 24 hours, we’ve seen several videos shared widely online that lacked proper context or were inaccurate, leading to false narratives. It’s critical that at this juncture in the election cycle, voters get their information from trusted sources," Schmidt said. "Spreading videos and other information that lack context, sharing social posts filled with half truths or even outright lies, is harmful to our representative democracy."

We rate the claim that a video shows "illegal ‘voters’ cutting the line" to vote in Pennsylvania False.