“The IC (Intelligence Community)

The Board of Elections in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, was quick to debunk the video on Thursday. “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 board said in a statement.

US intelligence has assessed that Russian operatives were behind a fake video purporting to show someone destroying mail-in ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, that circulated on social media Thursday.

“The IC (Intelligence Community) assesses that Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania, judging from information available to the IC and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities,” said a joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The agencies said that the video is part of an ongoing Russian effort to “raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans” in the final days of the 2024 campaign.

The county is crucial in determining whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

The video appeared on Thursday afternoon on X and was shared by some users as supposed evidence of voter fraud.

But the video was hatched by Russian operatives, according to Darren Linvill, an expert on Russian disinformation campaigns at Clemson University.

“We decided to put out a statement because so many people were calling us from not just Pennsylvania,” Poprik said.

Poprik acknowledged that plenty of Republican voters are already skeptical about whether voting by mail is safe, and she wanted to try to put them at ease. “It’s just scaring voters and it’s not what we want,” she said, “I personally voted by mail. I believe it’s safe.”