00:03Welcome to The Cube, Euronews' fact-checking show.
00:06A series of videos claiming to reveal electoral fraud spread online
00:11as voters headed to the polls in the German states of Berlin and Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania.
00:16Such as this video, which claims to show a man opening postal voting documents in Berlin
00:21and cutting up ballots for the Alternative for Germany party.
00:25However, these documents are fake.
00:27As confirmed by the election monitoring website Wahlrecht,
00:31the ballot packages lack the required polling cards,
00:34while neither the outer envelopes nor the ballot envelopes are sealed.
00:38The envelopes are shaped differently from the official versions,
00:41the ballots are folded in correctly,
00:43and the required papers for Berlin's district council elections are missing.
00:48This video is not the only one circulating with allegations of election fraud.
00:52As the vote took place, multiple accounts began posting the same video on X,
00:57alleging that mail-in ballots for the election in Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania left out the AFD.
01:03However, the official sample ballot for the constituency shown clearly includes the AFD.
01:09State election chief Christian Borden confirmed to German news agency DPA
01:13that the party appeared on all genuine ballots.
01:17These posts were amplified by accounts known to have links to Russia.
01:20Researchers noted that they bear similarities to videos released in 2025
01:25that were ultimately associated with Storm 1516.
01:29This is an influence network behind which Germany's intelligence service
01:33has described Russia as the central actor.
01:36It's far from the first time that Storm 1516,
01:39which aims to sow distrust in democratic institutions,
01:43has claimed election fraud.
01:44The AFD ultimately finished in first place in Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania,
01:49further contradicting claims that voters were prevented from choosing the party.
