A staged video purporting to show someone destroying a balloon…

YARDLEY, Pa. (AP) — A video showing ballots for former President Donald Trump being destroyed in suburban Philadelphia quickly went viral on social media Thursday afternoon.

Cries about falsification of the elections were heard immediately.

But within three hours, Bucks County election officials countered the video, calling it fake.

“The envelope and materials depicted in this video are clearly not authentic materials owned or distributed by the Bucks County Board of Elections,” the statement said. released by the board on Thursday.

This latest claim involving a key district is an example not only of attempts to influence voters in the final weeks of a contested election, but also of how election officials have learned to quickly counter false narratives over the past four years.

Since 2020, mistrust of the voting process has become entrenched among many Americans, creating an additional challenge for state and local officials who must not only manage elections but also repeatedly explain and emphasize vote protection guarantees.

Electoral bodies across the country have spent recent years bracing for an onslaught of false claimsfrom conducting worst-case-scenario tabletop exercises to strengthening emergency procedures with law enforcement to publishing proactive fact-checks on their websites. Many have also increased transparency to the public by opening their doors to all-access tours, hoping this will discourage some of the most damaging conspiracy theories.

The Bucks County video isn’t the only time that work has paid off. When artificial intelligence creates automated calls targeting Democratic voters in New Hampshire Days before the primary election in January, state authorities quickly released statements and launched an investigation that eventually led to criminal charges and fines for the responsible person.

Disinformation experts say the Bucks County video is indicative of a trend likely to intensify in the days leading up to Election Day — insidious disinformation, sometimes from foreign sources, designed to undermine public confidence in the election process.

This particular video is “almost certainly” related to a Russian disinformation network known as Storm-1516 or CopyCop, according to Darren Linville, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who has studied the group closely.

According to him, the user who popularized the video on X was the first distributor of several other narratives from that network. Among them was a fake video that went viral earlier this month making unsubstantiated allegations against Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz. The user also expanded on the first narrative that Linville’s team tracked from Storm 1516 back in August 2023.

According to Linville, the style and look of the latest video matches other videos from the network, including the use of a black actor.

Josephine Luquito, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin who has researched Russian disinformation, has long been a trend toward fake videos created in Russia. She said the video’s use of a black actor with an accent was a deliberate way to inflame existing divisions on American soil.

“It makes racism worse, doesn’t it?” Lukito said. “There is already such a wave of debate about immigrants who vote illegally, or immigration in general. Russian disinformation makes full use of it.”

After the video was debunked, user X deleted his original post and shared several posts from other accounts denouncing it as fake.

America PAC, the super political action committee neglected billionaire X owner Elon Musk will support Trump in his bid for a second term, was among those who condemned the video — a stark contrast to the misinformation that is often spread about X, often spurred on by Musk himself. The PAC declined a request for further comment.

There were several clues that immediately indicated that the Bucks County video was fabricated. For example, under Pennsylvania law, election officials have to wait to 7 a.m. ET on Election Day before they can begin processing mail-in ballots and prepare them for counting.

Other clues included the dark green color on the left side of the outer envelopes — actually more Kelly is green — and the gloss of the inner and outer shells, which actually have a matte finish. In addition, none of the envelopes in the video had voters’ return addresses written on them.

Complaints from citizens across Bucks County and a call from the Yardley Borough Police Chief alerted District Attorney Jennifer Schorn that the video was going viral. Schorn was at a pretrial conference Thursday, and when she left, she saw calls coming in about the video.

“It was at that point that we began to investigate the video and came to the final conclusion that it was in fact fabricated,” she said in a telephone interview on Friday.

The district attorney’s office initially investigated the video along with the Yardley Police Department.

Schorn would not describe how authorities reached their conclusion, citing concerns that subsequent scammers may improve their tactics. She said the FBI immediately launched an investigation and is trying to find who made the video. The FBI declined to comment on its investigation.

Schorn said her office has assigned two attorneys to investigate the fraud allegations and that they will be working “24/7” on Election Day.

Both Republicans and Democrats in the district called the video fake and expressed concern about how it could affect the election.

“To us, this is misinformation designed to scare voters and discourage them from using mail-in ballots or vote-on-demand, which uses the same mail-in process,” the Bucks County Republican Committee said in a statement. wrote in a statement. “We’ve seen dirty underhanded tactics this year, from defacing signs, threatening letters to Trump supporters, and now this video trying to scare Bucks County voters.”

Pennsylvania Sen. Steve Santarsiero, chairman of the Bucks County Democratic Committee, called the video an attempt to “call into question our mail-in voting and ultimately the outcome of the presidential election.” in the application.

Neither the origin of the video nor its purpose has been confirmed.

According to Schorn, the quick response to the video was made possible by people speaking up. She added that she thought the incident showed officials were prepared for what could happen and hoped it would “continue in the same vein.”

“I don’t blame Americans at all for wanting to be sure that the system can be trusted,” she said. – I do not blame for this, because, unfortunately, you know, there are criminal organizations that undermine the processes. I felt calm yesterday. I felt that it worked as little as possible.”

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