Footage from Canada misrepresented as 'fraud' in 2025 US elections
- Published on November 5, 2025 at 17:44
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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As Americans hit the polls in New York, Virginia and other states on November 4, 2025, conservative social media users shared a video they claimed showed Democrats improperly transporting ballots in a taxi, holding the clip up as evidence of election fraud. But the footage traces to Quebec during Canada's elections in April, AFP determined using reverse image searches and geolocation.
"Democrat ladies are carrying around ballots in a taxi. No this doesn't look suspicious at all," says a November 4 post sharing the video on X.
In the 36-second clip, a man behind a camera berates two women carrying large white bags that he claims contain ballots transported via taxi, calling it "a complete fraud." One of the women says they are working for the government and suggests the man recording speak to "the people inside" as he asserts that they could "fill out anything you want and put them in the box."
Text overlaid across the screen reads: "This is how dems use mail in and blank Ballots for scheming."
The video spread across platforms and was promoted repeatedly within the so-called "Election Integrity Community" on X, a group launched by billionaire Elon Musk's super PAC ahead of the 2024 election to crowdsource "potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities."
Similar posts alleging election-rigging or "fraud" and calling for the individuals to be arrested also circulated in the days leading up to Election Day, the first major contests in the United States since Republican President Donald Trump's takeover of the White House.
But the footage was filmed months earlier in Canada, unrelated to the US elections.
Reverse image searches surfaced the same video shared April 29 on X by a British Columbia-based user tagging Elections Canada, the agency responsible for running the country's elections. Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal Party won Canada's election the day prior.
AFP could not independently verify what the video showed or whether the women had in fact exited from a taxi. But in a thread responding to the original post, Elections Canada wrote that there were "many safeguards in place to manage the custody of the ballots and ballot boxes," including the sealing of ballot boxes until the votes were counted (archived here).
AFP geolocated the footage to the Decarie Square mall in Côte-Saint-Luc, Quebec, matching signs in French for "Ailes" and "Mega Vente" to Google Street View imagery (archived here). The shopping center is listed as a voting location on Elections Canada's website (archived here).
Canada's federal election was targeted with widespread narratives falsely claiming election workers were caught improperly transporting ballot boxes, including a similar video AFP debunked.
Read more fact-checks about the 2025 US elections here.
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