Elon Musk is accused of rampantly spreading election misinformation, and it has been a thorn within the aspect of election officers working double time to try to mitigate the spew of unfounded claims about meddling and alleged voter fraud. Some officers have even gone to measures like dispatching private notes to the CEO of Tesla and X, who endorsed Donald Trump in July following as assassination try at a rally in Butler, Pa.
“I’ve had my friends hand-deliver stuff to him,” Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County, Ariz. recorder, informed CNN. Richer, a Republican, has come beneath hearth from conservatives for defending the 2020 election final result that Trump misplaced.
However to date, the efforts of Richer’s colleagues have fallen brief. “We’ve pulled out more stops than most people have available to try to put accurate information in front of [Musk],” Richer mentioned. “It has been unsuccessful.”
Musk forged false details about election safety, together with insisting Individuals vote in-person and on paper, citing a debunked conspiracy that poll machines switched votes, at a Philadelphia city corridor occasion on Oct. 18. Musk traditionally has voted by mail, and his tremendous PAC, America PAC, has inspired mail-in voting.
His social media platform X has additionally didn’t quash election lies. A report from Middle for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) on Wednesday discovered X’s Neighborhood Notes characteristic “failed to counter false” claims concerning the election, with 209 of 283 (74%) analyzed posts not exhibiting notes correcting false data.
Election officers have been ready to battle misinformation this election after Trump’s fervent efforts to dispute the end result of the 2020 Presidential race, however the sheer quantity of on-line misinformation—and lack of tech to fight it—has proved irritating 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 elections,” Democrat Barb Byrum, Ingham, Mich., county clerk, informed Fortune. “We can report a threat, but nothing happens.”
X, in addition to America PAC and certainly one of Musk’s attorneys, didn’t reply to Fortune’s requests for remark.
Complications for election officers
The hassle to counter election lies has been an uphill battle, officers mentioned. As of August, Musk’s false election claims gained 1.2 billion views on X, in line with the CCDH evaluation.
“The truth of the matter is that mis- and disinformation will travel around the world and grow many legs long before I’m able to sit down at my desk and have a sip of coffee,” Byrum mentioned.
Officers like Richer have taken to the platform to have a direct dialogue with Musk. In a submit on X, Musk reposted and reaffirmed an unsubstantiated declare by the Trump-aligned America First Authorized, which launched a lawsuit suing 15 Arizona counties for allegedly refusing to take away undocumented migrants from voter rolls. Richer responded on X in September, saying he’s beforehand provided his workplace as a useful resource to Musk to appropriate earlier claims the CEO has made about Arizona elections.
“Sadly, these lawsuits are no longer interested in actually winning,” he mentioned. “They’re just PR stunts that masquerade as lawsuits.”
However there’s a draw back to officers attempting to fight false claims over social media. Making an attempt to place out misinformation fires is a poor allocation of time and power from officers involved with persevering with to prepare an election simply days away, mentioned Larry Norden of New York College Faculty of Legislation’s Brennan Middle for Justice.
“It’s distracting,” Norden informed ABC. “We are putting a huge load on election officials, and if, on top of that, they have to respond to a guy who boosts his own content on his own network to spread lies, it’s distracting from the essential work that they need to do. That is troubling.”
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