On Sunday, Saxony-Anhalt held one of Germany's most consequential elections in years. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a decisive lead, putting the party in a position to potentially form the first far-right state government in Germany since World War II.
In the days before the vote, false and misleading claims seized on the election's importance, with social media users alleging fraud, vote-rigging and irregularities in the handling and counting of ballots.
DW Fact Check previously documented some of these tactics as part of Matryoshka, also known as Operation Overload, a Russian-linked influence operation targeting German elections.
Below, we take a closer look at some more recent claims.
Claim: "German election workers recorded themselves outright destroying ballots that were cast for the populist party 'Alternative For Germany' (AfD), during Germany's recent elections," reads a post viewed 10,000 times on X, posted by a QAnon-associated account, a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement.
A one-minute video shows a white-gloved man unpacking ballots from red envelopes, laying them on a table, and drawing a black X through ones that select the AfD. A ballot marked for the CDU is set aside, as a voice says in German, "these are OK."
The same video was shared by numerous other accounts, in German and English across social media platforms X and YouTube.
Verdict: False
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On Sunday, Saxony-Anhalt held one of Germany's most consequential elections in years. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a decisive lead, putting the party in a position to potentiall...