Elon Musk debunked election conspiracies in 2020 in the first solo town hall supporting Trump

Washington
CNN
—

Elon Musk spread several debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election during his first solo roundhouse Thursday in Pennsylvania as he urged voters in the battleground state to support former President Donald Trump.

When asked by an audience gathered at the event in suburban Philadelphia about alleged “fraud” in 2020, Musk gave a somewhat rambling answer full of fundamental inaccuracies and blatantly false claims about the US elections.

“If you have mail-in ballots and, no, no proof of citizenship, it becomes almost impossible to prove fraud,” Musk falsely claimed.

Voter fraud is rare, but when it does happen, it is usually detected thanks to security measures built into voting processes, according to nonpartisan election experts.

Musk’s comments on stage before voters in Pennsylvania matched many of the billionaire’s factually challenged comments on his social media platform X, where he regularly spreads debunked pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

“There are some very strange things happening that are statistically incredibly unlikely,” Musk continued. “So it’s always about the Dominion voting machines, let’s say. It’s strange in my opinion that they are used in Philadelphia and Maricopa County but not many other places. Doesn’t that seem like a fucking coincidence?”

Dominion Voting Systems, the company falsely accused by Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others of rigging the 2020 election, famously received $787 million from Fox News to settle a defamation lawsuit related to its repeated spread of false statements Claims.

In a statement Thursday evening, a Dominion spokesman denied Musk’s claims.

“Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems already rely on voter-verified ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not questions of opinion. These are verifiable facts,” the company said.

Musk’s claim that there were systematic irregularities in Arizona and Pennsylvania in 2020 is false. Democratic and Republican officials in both states have repeatedly said the results showing President Joe Biden defeated Trump were accurate and verified.

Separately, in 2020, Dominion machines were deployed in Maricopa County, Arizona, home to the state’s largest city, Phoenix. But Musk falsely claimed that Dominion software was also used in Philadelphia. According to Verified Voting, the city used machines from ES&S, which tracks which voting machines are used in counties across the country.

ES&S did not immediately respond to a request from CNN to comment on Musk’s allegations.

At the event, Musk also reiterated a fallacy that Trump often brings up at his own rallies, calling for the U.S. to switch entirely to “paper ballots.”

“We should only cast hand-counted ballots,” Musk said. “That’s it. I am a technologist. I know a lot about computers and I think the last thing I would do is trust the computer program.”

As CNN previously reported, more than 98% of U.S. voters live in jurisdictions that already have fully auditable paper processes in place. Still, Trump regularly says the country needs to start using paper ballots.