CORRECTION -- STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

State Denies

Does a video show "illegal Haitians" saying they're voting for Kamala Harris in Georgia in Fulton and Gwinnett counties with driver's licenses they got after becoming citizens with just six months in the United States? No, that's not true: Names on the licenses flashed in the video were not found in the Georgia database of registered voters. The Georgia Secretary of State called the video "obviously faked." Independently, a Clemson University professor who studies online deception also labelled the video a fake.

The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on X on October 31, 2024. It said:

Illegal Haitians flown into the US claim they received all necessary documents and driver's licenses within just six months of arriving in the U.S. and are able to vote!!They show several Georgia driver's licenses featuring the same photo and claim to have voted for Kamala Harris in two different counties so far: Gwinnett and Fulton.

This is insane!! Imagine how many others are doing this!!

Can someone from Gwuinnett county and Fulton county in Georgia please verify this?!

This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 23:01:27 2024 UTC)

The video had close-up shots of the licenses. Lead Stories froze two of the frames and noticed they had details for men named "Jacques Bencit" and "Raoul Sylvan," including dates of birth and addresses:

(Source: Screenshots of the video in X post https://x.com/Alphafox78/status/1852032906601828859 taken by Lead Stories on Fri Nov 1 01:50:13 2024 UTC)

Looking up this information on Georgia's official "My Voter Page," a site where Georgia voters can look up their voter registration status, produced no results. This indicates nobody by those names was registered to vote in Georgia.

(Source: Screenshots of lookups on https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/mvp-landing-page performed by Lead Stories on Fri Nov 1 01:56:12 2024 UTC)

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (archived here) released a statement about the video late on October 31, 2024, that read:

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.

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.

We are working to combat this and identify the origin of it with our state and federal partners. CISA is currently investigating. In the meantime, we ask Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to take this down. This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort. Likely it is a production of Russian troll farms.

As Americans we can't let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine our faith in our institutions - or each other.

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for Raffensperger (archived here) posted a message on his X account (archived here) echoing Raffensperger's conclusions:

This is not true. It is classic disinformation. The likeliest suspect is a Russian troll farm. It's isn't even that good of a fake....but it is fake. It is a lie. Please let anyone you know that this is a steaming pile of Russian...well you get it. pic.twitter.com/7ILZhvYFHh

-- Gabriel Sterling (@GabrielSterling) October 31, 2024

Darren Linvill (archived here), a professor with Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub (archived here), which studies and combats online deception, posted two messages on his X account (archived here) calling the claim fake:

Video currently circulating of Haitian immigrants claiming to be voting illegally in Georgia has several hallmarks of the Russian, Storm-1516 campaign. The narrative focus, style and production of the video, as well as the distribution method all line up...Without question the video is fake . . . I cannot think of a less cost effective and more risky way of getting out the vote than to fly people here from Haiti and provide them with fake documents.

-- Darren Linvill (@DarrenLinvill) October 31, 2024

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced on November 1, 2024, that "saying "Russian influence actors manufactured" the video that "falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia" (archived here).

The driver's licenses in the video also do not match a valid Georgia driver's license, lacking the red "USA" and "GA" marks in the top right corner, according to the Georgia Department of Driver Services website (archived here). Here's what the example on the state's website looks like:

(Source: Georgia Department of Driver Services website screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 23:04:11 2024 UTC)

At the 14-second mark in the video posted on X, the person is holding what appear to be several driver's licenses (screenshot below) but they do not look like the one on the government website as shown above.

(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 23:05:32 2024 UTC)

Here is one more up-close screenshot of the driver's licenses in the video:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 23:39:15 2024 UTC)

Lead Stories uploaded the video to the AI detection tools at TrueMedia.org. True Media reported "some evidence of manipulation," which is not a strong signal from that website's detection tools. TrueMedia's overall rating was "Uncertain: Could Be Authentic or Manipulated" as this screenshot shows:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 23:15:23 2024 UTC)

Other Lead Stories fact checks regarding the 2024 election can be found here.