康涅狄格州哈特福德一名妇女在黑暗中拿着一把选票走向投票箱。在另一个投票箱，可以看到有人多次往返去投选票。还有一次，同一辆车至少停了三次，不同的人下车走向包厢。
这不是关于作弊的最新阴谋电影的预告片选举南相反，这段视频已经成为现实世界中关于投票箱潜在欺诈的争议的核心，投票箱是自前总统以来右翼阴谋论者最喜欢的目标唐纳德·特朗普美国在2020年大选中的失败。
对投递箱欺诈的指控不是来自那些推动边缘选举主张的人，也不是来自长期以来支持取消或严格限制使用投递箱的持怀疑态度的共和党人。它们是由民主党人做出的——两位候选人在康涅狄格州最大的城市竞争市长，在一个严重的民主党州，开始允许在新冠肺炎疫情期间使用投票箱。
共和党人抓住了这场争吵，这场争吵现在正走向法律摊牌，可能导致新的选举，他们说，这证实了他们的担忧，即投件箱欺诈的时机已经成熟。
共和党众议员道格·杜比斯基(Doug Dubitsky)在一场围绕布里奇波特市长竞选争议的立法辩论中，提到了被广泛揭穿的电影《2000头骡子》(2000 Mules)。
"我们怎么知道只有布里奇波特?"杜比茨基说，他代表的这个州在特朗普时代变得更加保守。“这个州的每一个城市都可能发生完全相同的事情。我们应该彻底摆脱这些盒子。”
从表面上看，这场争议是地方性的:两位候选人互相指责对方在市政选举中舞弊。但它的连锁反应远远超出了这座14.8万人口的城市，可能会对明年全国的选举产生影响。
共和党总统候选人提名的领跑者特朗普(Trump)一直在加倍隐瞒他在2020年大选中失利的谎言，因为他面临与试图推翻民主党人乔·拜登(Joe Biden)胜利有关的刑事指控。尽管大量证据表明选举是公平和准确的，但绝大多数共和党人仍然认为选举不公平。
在众多助长右翼这一信念的阴谋论中，有一些是围绕投票箱的。
布里奇波特视频的新闻已经通过右翼社交媒体平台和极右翼媒体传播，将争议与2020年被盗的选举索赔联系起来。用户们宣传这项调查，认为这是与投票箱有关的普遍欺诈行为的持续虚假叙述的证据。
这些视频以及这种说法是由两名民主党候选人提出的事实，可能会进一步加剧右翼的批评，即投件箱是选举恶作剧的工具。这是选举官员已经奋斗了三年的看法。
“这有可能让特例成为某些人心目中的规则，”爱达荷州前地方选举官员大卫·勒文说，他现在是德国马歇尔基金会“保障民主联盟”的高级研究员众所周知，投件箱本身非常安全可靠。"
自9月12日现任市长乔·加尼姆(Joe Ganim)和他的挑战者、该市前首席行政官约翰·戈麦斯(John Gomes)在布里奇波特市长竞选中进行初选以来，这些视频已在几周内陆续流出。戈麦斯在8173张投票中以251票落败，一周后提出选举挑战，此前一段视频似乎显示，一名加尼姆的支持者在凌晨将几个信封投入市政厅附属建筑外的投票箱。
否认参与的加尼姆指出，网上发布的另一批视频显示，戈麦斯的支持者在其他投票箱多次停留。戈麦斯说，他与视频中的人交谈过，并被告知他们正在为亲属投票。
在康涅狄格州，使用投票箱的选民必须自己交回填好的选票，或者指定某些家庭成员、警察、地方选举官员或护理人员代为交回。
法官将在本周四听取戈麦斯法律挑战的辩论，证词预计将持续几天。戈麦斯要求法官宣布他获胜，或者下令举行新的初选。
州政府已经展开了自己的调查。一些共和党议员曾在疫情期间对投递箱的安全性表示担忧，他们表示，布里奇波特的视频证明他们是正确的。
“没有人能告诉我，在这个国家，当然在这个州，当然在过去的几周里，没有人不质疑我们选举的完整性。我说的是两个政党的人，”州参议员罗布·桑普森说，他是大会政府选举和管理委员会的最高共和党人。“这并不孤立于特朗普总统说选举在2020年被盗。”
许多选举官员认为投件箱是安全可靠的，各州在不同程度上使用了投件箱，很少出现问题。美联社(Associated Press)对美国各州选举官员的调查发现，2020年总统选举中没有与投币箱有关的欺诈、故意破坏或盗窃案件可能会影响结果。
在许多情况下，投件箱被放置在选举工作人员或安全摄像头可以监控的地方。地方选举办公室通常有程序来确保选票从被取回到到达选举办公室的安全。
然而阴谋论和消除阴谋论的努力依然存在。根据投票权实验室(Voting Rights Lab)收集的数据，自2020年大选以来，已有五个州禁止投票箱，六个州限制了投票箱的可用性。投票权实验室跟踪各州与投票相关的立法，并倡导扩大选民参与。
“问题不在于投票箱，”康涅狄格州选民倡导组织“共同事业”的执行主任切里·奎克迈尔说。“在这种特殊的情况下，问题似乎是允许这种活动的竞选活动的领导，有工作人员，有竞选工作人员...会把选票装在大信封里，然后塞进投票箱。”
控制康涅狄格州立法机构和全州所有办公室的民主党人，迄今为止成功地抵制了禁止投递箱的尝试，同时采取措施解决争议。他们也对视频表示震惊，但敦促共和党人等待调查结束。
“今天的一个问题，也是即将出现的一个问题是，你会采取一种破坏性的方法，禁止所有其他人的一切吗?”众议院议长马特·里特是哈特福德的民主党人，他上个月晚些时候告诉记者。“或者，在处理我们都认为很严重的情况时，你会尝试使用更多的解剖刀方法吗?”
Drop boxes have become key to election conspiracy theories. Two Democrats just fueled those claims
HARTFORD, Conn. --A woman approaches a drop box in the dark with what appears to be handfuls of ballots. At a different drop box, someone else is seen making multiple trips to insert ballots. At yet another, the same car stops on at least three separate occasions, with different people stepping out and heading to the box.
It’s not a trailer for the latest conspiracy movie about riggedelections. Instead, the video footage has become central to a real-world controversy over potential fraud involving ballot drop boxes, a favorite target of right-wing conspiracy theorists since former PresidentDonald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
The accusations of drop box fraud are not coming from those pushing fringe election claims or from skeptical Republicans who have long favored eliminating or severely restricting use of the boxes. They are being made by Democrats -- two candidates vying for mayor in Connecticut’s largest city, in a heavily Democratic state that began allowing drop boxes to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republicans have seized on the spat, which is now headed to a legal showdown that could result in a new election, to say it validates their concerns that drop boxes are ripe for fraud.
State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican, evoked the widely debunked movie “2000 Mules” during a legislative debate over the controversy surrounding the Bridgeport mayor’s race.
“How do we know that it’s only Bridgeport?” said Dubitsky, who represents an area of the state that has grown more conservative in the Trump era. “This exact same thing could be happening in every single municipality in this state. We should get rid of these boxes completely.”
On the surface, the controversy is a local matter: Two candidates are accusing each other of fraud in a municipal election. But its ripple effects travel far beyond the city of 148,000 and could have implications for the elections next year across the country.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has been doubling down on his lies about his loss in the 2020 election as he faces criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win. Despite mounds of evidence showing the election was fair and accurate, a solid majority of Republicans still believe it was not.
Among the many conspiracy theories that have fueled that belief on the right are those surrounding ballot drop boxes.
News of the Bridgeport videos has spread through right-wing social media platforms and on far-right media, connecting the controversy to the 2020 stolen election claims. Users have promoted the investigation as evidence for the persistent, false narratives about widespread fraud connected to ballot drop boxes.
The videos and the fact that the claims are being pushed by two Democratic candidates threaten to further inflame criticism from the right that drop boxes are vehicles for election mischief. It's a perception that election officials have been fighting for three years.
“It risks making what is the exception the rule in some folks’ mind,” said David Levine, a former local election official in Idaho who is now a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It’s well established that drop boxes themselves are very safe and secure.”
The videos have trickled out in the weeks since the Sept. 12 primary in the Bridgeport mayor's race between incumbent Joe Ganim and his challenger, John Gomes, the city’s former chief administrative officer. Gomes, who lost by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast, filed an election challenge a week later after a video appeared to show a Ganim supporter putting several envelopes into a drop box outside a city hall annex in the early morning.
Ganim, who has denied involvement, is pointing to another batch of videos posted online that appear to show Gomes' supporters making multiple stops at other ballot drop boxes. Gomes has said he has spoken with those shown in the videos and been told they were dropping off ballots for relatives.
In Connecticut, voters using a drop box must return their completed ballot themselves or designate certain family members, police, local election officials or a caregiver to do it for them.
A judge will hear arguments in Gomes’ legal challenge this coming Thursday, with testimony expected over several days. Gomes is asking the judge to declare him the winner or order a new primary election.
The state has launched its own investigation. Some Republican lawmakers, who had raised concerns about the security of drop boxes during the pandemic, said the Bridgeport videos prove they were correct.
“No one can tell me that there are not people across this country, and certainly in this state, certainly in the last couple of weeks, that are not questioning the integrity of our elections. And I’m talking about people in both political parties,” said state Sen. Rob Sampson, the Senate's top Republican on the General Assembly’s Government Elections and Administration Committee. “This is not isolated to President Trump saying the election was stolen in 2020."
Drop boxes are considered by many election officials to be safe and secure and have been used to varying degrees by states across the political spectrum with few problems. A survey by The Associated Press of state election officials across the United States found no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft related to drop boxes in the 2020 presidential election that could have affected the results.
In many cases, drop boxes are placed in locations where they can be monitored by election staff or security cameras. Local election offices typically have procedures to ensure the security of the ballots from the time they are retrieved until they arrive at the election office.
Yet the conspiracy theories and efforts to get rid of them persist. Since the 2020 election, five states have moved to ban ballot drop boxes while six have moved to limit their availability, according to data collected by the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks voting-related legislation in the states and advocates for expanded voter access.
“It’s not the ballot boxes that are the problem,” said Cheri Quickmire, executive director of the voter advocacy group Common Cause in Connecticut. “In this particular case, it seems like the problem is the leadership of campaigns that permit that kind of activity, that has staff, that has campaign staff who ... would put ballots in big envelopes and stuff them into the ballot box.”
Democrats, who control the Connecticut Legislature and all statewide offices, have so far been successful in pushing back against attempts to ban drop boxes while taking steps to address the controversy. They've also expressed shock over the videos but urged Republicans to wait for the investigations to play out.
“The one question for today, and that’s going to come up, is do you take a wrecking ball approach and ban everything for everybody else?” House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Hartford Democrat, told reporters late last month. “Or do you try to use more of a scalpel approach in dealing with a situation that we all agree is serious?”
