No, these photos do not show fake fingers made for casting votes

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 23, 2019 at 10:00
2 min read
By AFP Philippines

An image of prosthetic fingers has been shared dozens of times in a Facebook post written in English and Filipino that claims they were "made for casting votes". The claim is false; the pictures have been taken from 2013 articles about prosthetic fingers helping to reform former Yakuza in Japan.

The image, which consists of a collage of two photographs showing prosthetic fingers laid out on a table, was published here on Facebook on April 11, 2019. It has been shared nearly 50 times since.

Translated to English, the post's caption says:

"WARNING!!! Fake fingers being made for casting votes. I just saw this somewhere… I'm not the one who made the pic. But I posted this for everyone's awareness. I hope this does not happen or that these would not be used in our country. God bless Philippines!"

The post was published two days before overseas voting began on April 13 for the Philippine midterm elections, as detailed on this election commission information page.

Voting inside the Philippines will be held one month later on May 13, according to the election commission here.

Below is a screenshot of the Facebook post:

Screenshot of Facebook post

The same image was also used in Facebook posts that claimed the fingers were made to cast votes in India, where elections began on April 11. Here is AFP’s fact-check of those claims.

A reverse image search on Yandex traced the top photo in the misleading post back to the website of Japanese-American journalist Akiko Fujita.

The page has since been taken down but here is an archived version of her article dated December 16, 2013.

Below is a screenshot of the article which was posted to Facebook on February 14, 2017:

Snapshot of the news report

The headline states: "Prosthetic fingers help reform former Yakuza members".

Another reverse image search on Yandex found an original photo, which matched the bottom image in the misleading post, published in this report by US news network Good Morning America on June 7, 2013.

Below is a screenshot of the report:

Snapshot of the report

The headline states: “Prosthetic Fingers Help Reform Japan's Feared Yakuza Gangsters”.

AFP published this article about the Japanese prosthetic fingers on June 13, 2013.

Below is the accompanying video report on AFP’s official YouTube channel:

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail