Elon Musk is accused of rampantly spreading election misinformation, and it has been a thorn in the side of election officials working double time to try and mitigate the spew of unfounded claims about meddling and alleged voter fraud. Some officials have even gone to measures like dispatching personal notes to the CEO of Tesla and X, who endorsed Donald Trump in July following as assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa.
“I’ve had my friends hand-deliver stuff to him,” Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County, Ariz. recorder, told CNN. Richer, a Republican, has come under fire from conservatives for defending the 2020 election outcome that Trump lost.
But so far, the efforts of Richer’s colleagues have fallen short. “We’ve pulled out more stops than most people have available to try to put accurate information in front of [Musk],” Richer said. “It has been unsuccessful.”
Musk cast false information about election security, including insisting Americans vote in-person and on paper, citing a debunked conspiracy that ballot machines switched votes, at a Philadelphia town hall event on Oct. 18. Musk historically has voted by mail, and his super PAC, America PAC, has encouraged mail-in voting.
His social media platform X has also failed to quash election lies. A report from Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) on Wednesday found X’s Community Notes feature “failed to counter false” claims about the election, with 209 of 283 (74%) analyzed posts not showing notes correcting false information.
Election officials were prepared to fight misinformation this election after Trump’s fervent efforts to dispute the outcome of the 2020 Presidential race, but the sheer volume of online misinformation—and lack of tech to combat it—has proved frustrating for some.
“Flagging things as mis- and disinformation is not helpful anymore on Twitter, especially when you have Elon Musk himself pushing mis- and disinformation about…