Georgia’s Secretary of State says a video circulating on social media purporting to show Haitians illegally voting for Kamala Harris is a hoax.
Brad Raffensperger said in a statement that the video was probably created and distributed by Russian government officials seeking to interfere in the U.S. election.
“This is clearly a fake, probably made on a troll farm in Russia,” he wrote. “As Americans, we cannot allow our enemies to use lies to divide us and undermine trust in our institutions or each other.”
The video shows two people who say they are from Haiti and say they came to the United States six months ago and obtained U.S. citizenship.
“We’re voting for Kamala Harris. Yesterday we voted in Gwinnett County and today we’re voting in Fulton County,” the man said in the 20-second video. “We have all the documents, including driver’s licenses. We encourage all Haitians to bring their families and come to America.”
The video was reported to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which confirmed the hoax after Raffensperger’s office discovered that one of the alleged “voters” had a fake driver’s license. said.
President Trump and his campaign made a racist comment about Haitian immigrants “eating pets,” and instead of apologizing even when it was proven false, they later doubled down on the claim, and the Ohio Threats against Springfield’s Haitian community escalated rapidly. Have a legal right to live in the United States.
Raffensberger did not include a link to the video, but it has been widely spread on social media by prominent right-wing accounts, most notably the Elon Musk-owned X.
In a statement Thursday, Raffensperger urged Musk to remove the video from X and called on “leaders of other social media platforms to do the same.”
Despite pledging to purge the platform of disinformation at the time of the acquisition, Musk has since done the opposite, not only allowing false and misleading posts to spread, but frequently even after they have been debunked. He is sharing the post himself.
Raffensperger, a Republican, defended the integrity of Georgia’s 2020 election results following President Trump’s false claims that the results were “stolen.” In a call with the secretary of state, President Trump asked her to “find” enough votes to change the results in Georgia, which Biden won.
Raffensberger refused, pointing out there was no fraud. Trump later described him as an “enemy of the people.”
Trump is facing federal charges for trying to interfere with Georgia’s presidential election.
Russia also continues to attempt to interfere in U.S. elections. A U.S. intelligence report last year found that Russia was using spy networks, state media and social media to undermine public confidence in the election, calling it a “global phenomenon.”
