Elon Musk has been accused of widely disseminating election misinformation, posing significant challenges for election officials who are striving to address the surge of baseless claims regarding election interference and alleged voter fraud. In response, some officials have resorted to direct communication with Musk, the CEO of Tesla and X, who endorsed Donald Trump in July after an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County, Arizona recorder, reported to CNN that he has even had friends personally deliver information to Musk. Richer, a Republican, has faced criticism from conservatives for defending the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost. However, efforts by Richer and his colleagues to provide Musk with accurate information have so far been unsuccessful.
Musk has propagated false information about election security, encouraging Americans to vote in-person and on paper. During a town hall event in Philadelphia on October 18, he cited a debunked conspiracy theory alleging that ballot machines switched votes. Although Musk has historically voted by mail, his super PAC, America PAC, has supported mail-in voting.
The social media platform X has struggled to effectively counter election misinformation. According to a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), X’s Community Notes feature did not adequately address false claims about the election, with 74% of analyzed posts lacking notes that corrected misinformation.
Despite efforts by election officials to combat misinformation, the vast amount of online falsehoods and inadequate technological tools to address them have been frustrating. According to Barb Byrum, the county clerk of Ingham, Michigan, efforts to flag misinformation on platforms like Twitter have been hindered by Musk’s own promotion of misleading election content.
Requests for comment from X, America PAC, and one of Musk’s attorneys were not answered by Fortune.
The struggle to counter election misinformation has been daunting for officials. Data from CCDH indicated that Musk’s misleading election claims on X had garnered 1.2 billion views by August. Byrum expressed concerns about the rapid spread of misinformation and its impact on officials’ ability to manage crucial tasks.
Officials like Richer have engaged directly with Musk on the platform. Musk had shared and supported an unsubstantiated claim by America First Legal, Trump-aligned, which led to a lawsuit against 15 Arizona counties over allegations of not removing undocumented migrants from voter rolls. Richer responded on X, offering to serve as a resource to Musk for verifying claims about Arizona elections.
Richer criticized such lawsuits as mere public relations stunts with no genuine interest in winning. Nonetheless, engaging with false claims via social media can divert officials’ time and energy away from organizing upcoming elections, according to Larry Norden from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, who discussed the distractions caused by combating misinformation.
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