Georgia official warns of Russian interference in U.S. vote

The top election official in the southern US state of Georgia has warned that a video allegedly showing a Haitian immigrant voting multiple times is part of a targeted disinformation campaign likely originating from Russia.

The 2024 US presidential campaign has been inundated with at times highly sophisticated misinformation that has only deepened with the approach of Election Day on November 5.

"Earlier today, our office became aware of a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia ID's claiming to have voted multiple times," Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement published Thursday night.

"This is false, and is an example of targeted disinformation we've seen this election. It is likely foreign interference attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election."

Raffensperger, who rose to national prominence after the 2020 presidential vote by refusing Donald Trump's demands to change the state's election results, added he was asking Elon Musk, a staunch Trump supporter, and the leaders of other social media companies for their help in taking the clip down.

The 20-second clip can still be found on X. It features a man saying in a stilted, robotic delivery, "We are from Haiti. We came to America six months ago, and we already have American citizenship -- we're voting Kamala Harris."

He then says he and his friends have voted in multiple counties and shows off an array of driver's licenses.

"This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort," said Raffensperger. "Likely it is a production of Russian troll farms."

Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the state government, told AFP it had made its determination based on information on the driver's licenses shown in the videos.

"We checked the voter registration lists. There was no match. The identifications are fake, and there's no way the people in the video cast ballots in Georgia using those IDs," he said.

Darren Linvill, a misinformation expert at Clemson University, told AFP the effort bore the hallmarks of the Russian propaganda group Storm-1516, based on factors such as narrative focus, style and production, and how it was distributed.

"They were very careful in how they filmed it not to give anything away to OSINT investigators," said Linvill. "Importantly, they also use what are likely West African actors, frequently recruited from the St. Petersburg area."

OSINT means open-source intelligence investigators.

The same group has been implicated in other recent disinformation efforts documented by AFP.

These include a video purporting to show a man in Pennsylvania sifting through mail-in ballots and tearing up those cast for Donald Trump, and an unfounded claim of sexual assault against Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz.