When Elon Musk took over as Twitter owner, election researchers and officials feared a rampant spread of misinformation that would lead to threats and harassment and undermine democracy.
Your fears It came true – and Musk himself has emerged as one of its main drivers.
The tech billionaire has cast doubt on the machines that count votes and mail ballots, two common features of American elections. He has repeatedly claimed there is rampant voting by non-citizens, a frequent topic of discussion among Republicans in these elections.
Musk, the ultra-wealthy owner of Tesla and other tech companies, is scheduled to interview Donald Trump on Monday, where they are sure to find common ground on these election conspiracies. Musk is an outspoken supporter of the former US president and current Republican candidate. He has restored Twitter/X accounts of people who were banned under the previous owner, dismantling the platform’s fact-checking and security features. Trump’s X account, which was banned under the previous owner, was reinstated by the former US president. suspended Following the January 6 insurrection, it was also restored, although Trump has not actively returned to the platform.
“Electronic voting machines and anything sent by mail are too risky. We should require that paper ballots be used and that voting be done in person only,” he said. wrote in X in July.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer responded and asked if he could give Musk a tour of the large Arizona county’s facilities and go over the mail-in voting processes.
“You can go into all the rooms, examine all the equipment and ask all the questions you want. We would love to show you the security measures that are already in place, which I think are very robust,” Richer said.
This wasn’t the only time Richer tried to correct election misinformation Musk had shared. He previously… I tried to fix the misunderstandings Arizona voter data and citizenship testing rules.
Social media platforms have generally taken less aggressive stances on fact-checking election falsehoods following an ongoing campaign by Republican lawmakers and their allies to attack the ways elected officials and researchers flagged information and how the platforms responded.
“I think X really stands out as a place where that change has been striking, and the fact that it’s come from the very top just shows how problematic it is,” said Mekela Panditharatne, a senior adviser in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.
Musk shared a video that used an AI-generated voice for Kamala Harris, sparking concerns that it could fool some people into thinking it was real. Musk and the video’s creator defended it as a parody.
He has also written several times claiming that non-citizens are voting in U.S. elections, which is illegal except in a few local elections. There are few instances of non-citizens voting, or even registering to vote. In late July, he shared a video of Elizabeth Warren talking about a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented people living in the U.S. “As I was saying, they are importing voters,” he said. a nod to the “great replacement” theory.
Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot from the platform that Musk has created invoiced As an “anti-woke” antidote to left-leaning chatbots, Musk has spread false information that election deadlines had passed in nine states, meaning the vice president could not be on the ballot in those places, which is not true. Secretaries of state are urging Musk to fix this problem for the chatbot, which does not have the election information guardrails that other chatbots, such as ChatGPT, have.
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“It’s important for social media companies, especially those with global reach, to correct mistakes they themselves make, such as the case of the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, which simply got the rules wrong,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. He told the Washington Post“Speaking out now will hopefully reduce the risk that any social media company will refuse or delay correcting its own mistakes between now and the November election.”
Off-platform, a political action committee created by Musk is mining personal information of voters in key states on what initially appears to users to be a voter registration portal, CNBC reported. America Pac, a pro-Trump group backed by Musk’s massive wealth is targeting swing state voters. Data tracking is now being investigated by at least two states.
Despite his endless claims of election fraud, Musk He told the Atlantic This month he would accept the results of the 2024 elections, with one caveat.
“If there are questions about the integrity of the election, they must be properly investigated and not dismissed out of hand or questioned without reason,” he said. “If, after reviewing the election results, it turns out that Kamala wins, that victory must be acknowledged and not questioned.”
