With just two weeks to go until Election Day, billionaire Trump-backer Elon Musk is encouraging people to post about anything they suspect might be voter fraud on his social media platform X.
“Be very loud about it if you have any concerns,” Musk said at a Pittsburgh rally on Sunday, while answering an audience question about voting machines. “The brighter the light we shine on any voting issues, the less likely there is to be cheating.”
A day later, Musk’s pro-Trump political action committee, America PAC, launched a “community” on X asking for users to “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities [they] see while voting in the 2024 election.”
Social media posts like the ones Musk is encouraging people to make have become one of the main sources for conspiracy theories in recent election cycles.
“Elon Musk’s amplification of voter fraud conspiracies is highly irresponsible and likely to increase distrust in our democratic infrastructure,” Nina Jankowicz, co-founder of The American Sunlight Project, told TPM.
“I have studied, worked in, served on election observation missions in countries where voter fraud is very real; it takes generations for trust in the system to be rebuilt,” Jankowicz said. Musk, she added, is “actively attempting to undermine American democracy for years to come.”
Unmoderated posts alleging voter fraud on X and other platforms have helped fuel the false narratives and conspiracy theories that the far-right is already relying on to claim that the 2024 election is insecure — a repeat of what unfolded in 2020 as Trump and his supporters sought any avenue to contest his defeat.
“On election night, if Trump believes he’s losing, he is likely to spread massive amounts of disinformation about the existence of fraud,” David Becker, executive director of the Center of Election Innovation and Research, told CBS.
“I think we can say with near certainty, Elon Musk is going to take those comments and spread them out to hundreds of millions of people to be consumed immediately, while election officials are busy counting ballots,” he said.
Last week, Musk also promoted debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud that harkened back to Trump’s 2020 big lie, suggesting that Dominion Voting Systems was part of a plot to rig the election.
“When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” Musk said. “Statistically there are some very strange things that happen that are statistically incredibly unlikely. There’s always this question of, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they were used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County [in Arizona] but not in a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?”
“The last thing I would do is trust a computer program,” the tech billionaire added.
In response, a Dominion spokesperson pushed back on the billionaire’s unfounded claims with a fresh dose of debunking.
“Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County,” the Dominion spokesperson said. “Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts.”
The voting hardware company reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News last year in a defamation lawsuit they had filed over similar debunked claims.
Over the last year, Musk has posted several conspiracy theories related to election fraud on his feed, including one that claims Democrats are bringing immigrants to the U.S. to get more votes.
“The danger right now is that there are people that are looking to blow up any kind of glitch and use it to confirm narratives that they are trying to sell about the elections not being trustworthy,” Lawrence Norden, the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program, told Politico.
He’s back, churning the pot.
King of the Incels.
Chumming the waters I think is more apt.
Dear Mr. Musk
I’d like to report an absolutely absurd, unheard of level of election interference by…YOU!!!
*&^%$#@!
Ten years ago this guy was one of my heroes - now he is one of my nightmares. It is like watching a friend transform into a werewolf.
He has become a real monster - what are they going to do with him if Kamala wins?
Elon Musk was a good Democrat when he needed Government to subsidized what would have otherwise been a dismal business failure, Tesla. That is until a short time ago, Tesla was dependent on Government to subsidize both purchases of Tesla and the business itself. Now that he is able to stand on his own feet and thanks to Government is a very rich person, he is indeed a different person.
But to posting about voter fraud, the biggest voter fraud is voter suppression. That is if I were to ever post on his site, my post would be:
This is to alert everyone, as encouraged by Elon Musk himself, the attempts at voter fraud by Musk himself and Donald Trump of trying to keep American citizens from exercising their constitutional rights to vote. In my opinion, Mr. Musk should be in jail and lose his business for this un-American attempt to keep Americans from voting through lies and intimidation.