Topline
Billionaire Elon Musk shared tweets Thursday alleging potential voter fraud from the 2020 election in Georgia, and suggested the frequency of fraud is still an open question — marking the latest entry into the billionaire’s history of promoting unsubstantiated voting concerns, even though experts believe voter fraud is not a prevalent issue in the U.S.
Elon Musk tweeted concerns about election fraud in Connecticut after a judge ruled a mayoral primary … [+]
Key Facts
Musk weighed in Thursday afternoon on a recent situation in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in which a judge ordered a new primary in a mayoral race — that was won by mere hundreds of votes — because of concerns around potential ballot stuffing.
“That this happened here is beyond reasonable doubt,” Musk said in the tweet, referring to ballot stuffing, adding: “The only question is how common it is.”
In Connecticut, Superior Court Judge William Clark said surveillance footage showing a woman apparently putting multiple ballots into a ballot box was “shocking” and said “the volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt,” according to NBC Connecticut.
Musk also linked to a video posted by Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington on X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that Musk bought last year — in which people are speculating a woman was stuffing ballots in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 2020 and calling her a felon for turning in what appeared to be six ballots.
The video shared by Musk does not appear to have been debunked by law enforcement, though at least three other videos in Gwinnett County that citizens had raised as potential voter fraud were debunked when investigators found the videos showed one person turning in ballots on behalf of family members, which is legal in the county.
Even if the claims were not debunked and investigators found the ballots were harvested, Chairman of the Elections Board Matt Mashburn said the votes would have been legal under Georgia law and should be counted, according to the Washington Post.
Forbes has reached out to Musk for comment.
Key Background
Many claims of voter fraud—especially involving absentee ballots and ballot stuffing or harvesting—have been debunked prior to and in the years following the 2020 election. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, there is extensive research showing voter fraud is “very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent” and many instances of alleged fraud are simply mistakes. For example, in 2017, the Center found the rate of voting fraud in the U.S. was less than 0.0009%. There is also research showing that there is no evidence absentee, or mail-in, ballots increase voter fraud, according to the Brookings Institute, and former President Donald Trump’s claims of mail-in voter fraud have been rejected by courts. In Georgia—a state that was targeted by Trump’s election fraud claims—officials on both sides of the political aisle have maintained there wasn’t “widespread” fraud. Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who served as Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said in January 2021 that there was “no evidence of any irregularities,” and when they looked into potential incidents that were reported they found “nothing that seems real in any way, shape or form, honestly.”
Tangent
Despite the data showing that voter fraud is increasingly rare and claims that the 2020 election was stolen being debunked, this isn’t the first time Musk has promoted election interference theories. As recently as May, Musk tweeted a link to a story in “The Federalist,” a conservative online publication, alleging Mark Zuckerberg “bought” the 2020 presidential election by making large donations. X also received criticism for its handling of misinformation about the election, and politics more broadly, and not enforcing policies that allow platforms to restrict the spread of misinformation.
Forbes Valuation
Forbes estimates Musk’s net worth at $229.9 billion as of Thursday afternoon, making him the wealthiest person on Earth, largely due to his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
Further Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/11/02/elon-musk-shared-tweets-raising-concerns-about-ballot-stuffing—despite-experts-saying-voter-fraud-is-rare/