Does a photograph on social media show a suspicious "guy" who dropped off "a ton of ballots" after polling closed in Pennsylvania? No, that's not true: Pennsylvania's Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure told Lead Stories the man seen is a postal worker with the United States Postal Service and he was doing his job "delivering the mail", which includes legal mail-in ballots. A Postal Service spokesperson confirmed to Lead Stories that the man is a postal employee who does not ordinarily wear a uniform or drive a postal truck.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on October 29, 2024. It said:
We need to identify this guy. He dropped off a ton of ballots after the polling closed in Pennsylvania. He's driving a RHODE Island license plate. He identified himself as a postal worker.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thurs Oct 31 17:12:27 2024 UTC)
The post does not identify where the photograph was taken or when, but a search on X (archived here) using the keywords "man dropping off ballots" found another post (archived here) that said it was Northampton, Pennsylvania. That post included a link to a video posted on Rumble (archived here) that showed footage of the man entering the building.
Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure (archived here) spoke to Lead Stories via telephone on October 31, 2024, and said the person in the image and video is Charles Narciso, Jr., a 25-year veteran with the United States Postal Service (USPS). McClure explained what Narcisco was doing when the photograph and video were taken:
So he was doing the most normal natural legal thing you would expect from a public servant who works for the United States Postal Service. He was delivering the mail.
When asked if the polls were closed at the time of Narcisco's delivery, as the post claims, McClure responded that knowing Narcisco is an "interim postmaster" should be sufficient:
The rest of the questions, you know, I think give credence to a fundamental premise which I disagree with. Which is that there's any problem whatsoever with mail-in balloting. There's been no evidence of fraud, not only in Northampton County, but in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, associated with mail-in balloting. And so, to even give credence to this video that was shared in bad faith to put an election process in false light is just really exasperating to us.
Marti Johnson, a Postal Service spokesperson (archived here), confirmed to Lead Stories via email on October 31, 2024, that the man is a postal employee but would not confirm his name or length of service with the USPS. "We have a process for delivering Election Mail, including ballots, and our employee is following it," she said.
Johnson explained that on October 21, 2024, the USPS instituted what they call "extraordinary measures" in order to deliver mail-in ballots to be counted. The measures were announced in an October 23, 2024 press release (archived here). Johnson said:
The employee doesn't wear a uniform or drive a postal vehicle in the normal course of his duties, but he is the person to deliver those ballots.
Other Lead Stories fact checks regarding the 2024 U.S. general election can be found here.
