Fact check: Election fraud claims spread in Saxony-Anhalt

The article discusses false claims made in the days leading up to the Saxony-Anhalt election in Germany. Many social media users alleged fraud, vote-rigging and other irregularities in the handling and counting of ballots. Fact-checkers have previously documented some of these tactics as part of the Russian-linked influence operation known as Matryoshka, also called Operation Overload. The article focuses on three specific claims made by various social media users.

Firstly, a post with 10,000 views on X, shared by a QAnon-associated account, allegedly shows election workers destroying ballots for the Alternative For Germany (AfD) party. However, the video is staged and contains multiple telltale signs. All crossed-out ballots feature the same name and lack a hole punch, while the envelopes are already unsealed. The Gnida Project, a Russian disinformation watchdog, claims the video is part of the Storm-1516 campaign, run by Russia's military intelligence agency, GRU.

Secondly, some social media pages of deceased residents of Saxony-Anhalt have been used to spread the false claim that the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) is committing election fraud. This was done using a nearly identical template in five videos featuring a reputable news outlet's logo and baseless allegations against the CDU.

One of the videos falsely claims that the CDU will attempt to rig the election. The reporter Lars Wienand, who was allegedly featured in one of the videos, denied the accusations, stating that he had not reported any such thing.

Lastly, a post with over 160,000 views on X claimed that absentee voting ballots are being counted before the legal deadline in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt. However, a screenshot from a German newspaper, ZEIT, accurately shows a liveblog entry describing preparatory tasks rather than the actual counting of ballots. The ZEIT blog entry has since been corrected, specifying that the reporting was about preparations, not the actual counting of ballots.

According to the Saxony-Anhalt's state election regulations, ballots cannot be officially counted before the voting period ends at 6 p.m., although they can be opened in advance to facilitate later counting.