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Musk uses megaphone to promote misleading claims about voting, push for severe restrictions Judd Legum

Published

1 year ago

January 11, 2024

Elon Musk on December 15, 2023, in Rome, Italy (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

This week, Elon Musk has repeatedly promoted false and misleading claims about voting to his 168 million followers on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. Musk then used these erroneous claims to justify massive restrictions on voting in the United States, including eliminating early voting, abolishing most mail-in voting, and imposing new identification requirements.

On January 9, for example, Musk posted that “Arizona clearly states that no proof of citizenship is required for federal elections.” This revelation was accompanied by an image posted by an X user named Mark Jeffery, a cryptocurrency investor and self-published author of science fiction novels. A highlighted portion of the image states that individuals who do not provide proof of citizenship will be provided with a “federal only” ballot.

On January 10, Musk posted that he recently learned “illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections,” and that “came as a surprise.” That claim is absolutely false.

Arizona’s “federal only” ballots do not allow non-citizens to vote in federal elections. In 2004, Arizona tried to impose a requirement to provide proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, however, requires states to “accept and use a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections.” That form only requires “that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen.” A 2013 Supreme Court decision authored by the late Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative Justices in the history of the court, found that Arizona lacked the authority to reject the federal form.

This does not mean that non-citizens are free to vote in federal elections in Arizona or elsewhere. Under federal law, providing false information in order to vote is punishable by up to five years in prison. The federal form warns non-citizens that submitting the form could result in deportation. The Arizona form instructs non-citizens not to submit the voter registration form:

Conservatives have used the existence of “federal only” voters in Arizona to claim that non-citizens are voting. But an analysis published last month by the AZ Mirror found “federal-only voters in the state are concentrated in areas where residents are simply unlikely to have easy access to documents proving their citizenship, such as college campuses and a Phoenix homeless shelter.”

Musk’s alarm about non-citizen voting is not grounded in fact. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice evaluating 23.5 million votes across 12 states in 2016 found 30 incidents of suspected non-citizen voting, 0.0001% of the 2016 vote in those jurisdictions. A 2022 audit of Georgia voting rolls found about 1600 noncitizens attempting to register to vote over a 25-year period, and no non-citizens were actually allowed to register or vote.

The issue of non-citizen voting is connected to the racist Great Replacement theory, popular with white supremacists, that falsely claims that Democrats are allowing non-citizens to illegally enter the country as part of a plot to seize political power. Musk has repeatedly endorsed the Great Replacement theory on X.

Musk calls mail-in voting “insane”

Musk has also been spreading misinformation about the safety of voting by mail. In a January 8 post on X, Musk said it was “insane” that many states allow voters to “mail in your ballot.”

Musk’s suggestion that mail-in voting promotes fraud is false. Numerous studies have found that voting by mail is “safe and secure.” A database maintained by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which supports restrictions on mail-in voting, reported “1,200 cases of vote fraud of all forms” from 2000 to 2020. Of those cases, “204 involved the fraudulent use of absentee ballots,” with “143 result[ing] in criminal convictions.” This amounts to “one case [of fraud using mail-in ballots] per state every six or seven years,” or “about 0.00006 percent of total votes cast.” Similarly, a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found the risk of fraud from mail-in ballots was 0.00004% to 0.0009% “based on studies of past elections.”

There are multiple layers of security for mail-in ballots. While these measures vary from state to state, “all ballots cast by mail or dropped off at a drop box are vetted to ensure their legitimacy.” Each mail-in ballot is recorded so that voters can submit only one, and when the ballots are returned, they are “logged” and “checked against registration records.” Mail-in ballots also include a serial number on each envelope in order to avoid the possibility of counterfeits.

A study from 2020 reported that “expanding mail-in voting increases voter access.” Yet, in a post on X, Musk argued, “If elections are open for 16 hours, essentially everyone can vote” in person. This claim disregards voters who may not be able to get time off work, find childcare, or travel to a voting station, as well as students and other voters who may not be physically present in their home state.

Musk’s misleading claims about Voter ID

Musk has also repeatedly promoted Voter ID requirements, suggesting they will strengthen election security. “We should require government ID and in-person voting (unless valid medical/ military/etc excuse), like other countries do or like if you want to buy beer,” Musk said in response to a post.

But Musk’s claims are misleading — since 2002, anyone who wants to register to vote is required under federal law to provide either their driver’s license or the last four digits of their Social Security number. The Help America Vote Act also mandates that all first-time voters who register by mail and do not verify their identity must either show some form of identification at the polls or, if voting by mail, enclose a copy of it with their ballot.

Currently, 35 states “request or require” voters to provide documentation at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Depending on the state, valid identification can range from a photo ID to a bank statement with the voter’s name and address. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found imposing strict Voter ID laws had “no effect on fraud – actual or perceived.”

Musk also posted that “claiming that people can’t figure out how to get ID is racist and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.” But it is not an issue of intelligence. Factors like “burdensome documentation requirements, prohibitive financial costs,” and “limited availability of ID services,” can create barriers for people attempting to obtain an ID, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Currently, Black, Hispanic, and Native American voters are “about twice as likely” as White and Asian voters to lack a valid, government-issued photo ID. Younger and lower-income voters are also more likely to lack identification.

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WATCH: H.R. McMaster on Trump—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Michael Moynihan

Published

2 hours ago

January 17, 2025

admin

Very few people have worked closely with Donald Trump, gotten fired, and walked away with a pretty balanced view of him.

But Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser to President Trump, is an exception.

In his book At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, he gives an honest account of working in Trump’s first administration: the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Last week, McMaster, 62, sat down with Michael Moynihan at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for a live Free Press Book Club event to discuss it all. They talk about his moments of tension with Trump, his understanding of Trump’s foreign policy, and how Trump’s rhetoric toward adversaries was actually good, despite being villainized by the press.

They also get into Trump’s current cabinet picks—ones who McMaster sees as good, like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, but how good picks do not ensure a harmonious administration. They discuss Trump’s options for handling Russia, Iran, and Hamas in his second term, and why McMaster is surprisingly and cautiously optimistic about Trump 2.0. —BW

Dynamics within the first Trump White House:

Michael Moynihan: It’s very clear in your book that you see your job as somebody who has to implement the president’s agenda. But it’s also clear that you see people around you who have their own agenda that they’re trying to foist upon the president.

H.R. McMaster: Absolutely. The first group are people who don’t want to give the president options. They want to manipulate decisions based on their own agenda, not the president’s agenda. Then there were the people in Donald Trump’s administration who defined the president as an emergency or a danger to the country or the world, who had to be contained. And so the problem with those groups of people is that nobody elected them.

MM: There are a couple of people in the book that say, We’re afraid that Donald Trump is dangerous, right?

HRM: Absolutely. It just made everything harder. But at least for my 30 months, we transcended it. We got things done anyway. But every element of that friction just wore us down a little bit—and the other tactics they employed undercut us.

Nobody was as surprised as Donald Trump when he won the 2016 election. So there wasn’t a whole lot of preparation in terms of who’s going to come into many of these positions. He didn’t have any kind of trust built up with a lot of the people. Now it’s going to be somewhat different. He’s had a lot more time to prepare deliberately for this, and he’s selected his people. It was easy to kneecap me, because I didn’t have a history with him. Now it’s going to be harder to do that with Michael Waltz and Marco Rubio. Although they will come under attack because there are still going to be different camps in the new administration based on different motivations.

The president is the most powerful person in the world, so people are going to try to ingratiate themselves to him and try to use him to advance their agenda. People know how to push his buttons. I’ve described my first meeting in the Oval Office as an environment of competitive sycophancy. It was unbelievable. Things were said like, “Your instincts are always so good, Mr. President” and “You’re so wise.” I was like, “My gosh, are these people serious?”

MM: Does he fall for that?

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TGIF: Hard Pivot Nellie Bowles

Published

7 hours ago

January 17, 2025

admin

Welcome back. This is where, once a week, for a special reprieve, we look at the news and tell jokes. If you’re here for spiritual guidance, I can’t help you (but just in case: yes, you are forgiven your sins).

→ Biden says goodbye: President Joe Biden gave his farewell address Wednesday night, leaving with ominous warnings about dark forces (billionaires) exerting too much influence on American politics. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

I agree there is a new oligarchy of rich people who manipulate our political landscape, and I, for one, am glad that our president finally sees the danger of MacKenzie Scott and George Soros, billionaire political donors propping up untold numbers of causes. He’s never criticized MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos), but I’m sure he was thinking of her, the woman who has thrown $19 billion at activist nonprofits to sway American politics. I’m sure when he just recently gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros, he was thinking this is the dangerous oligarch I will speak of soon.

No, I’m being silly. Obviously he means the other side’s dangerous oligarchs! When a billionaire oligarch is throwing money at your own team, they’re just a concerned citizen doing what they can with what they have. Me, I’m balanced, moderate: I love all our oligarchs, on both sides. I want more oligarchs and less democracy. I want our political battles to be fought on warring yachts off the coast of Croatia. See, California lets voters vote on everything, and I’ve seen what too much democracy looks like, and I think that Penny Pritzker and Peter Thiel could sit with each other and come up with something better for us.

Biden continued: “President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. . . . Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power.”

First of all, Mr. President, The Free Press is doing great. But I love that Biden’s final address to the nation, his farewell, was about the need for Facebook fact-checkers. It was a presidency built around calling the refs, making us feel bad for any criticism (Hunter is a baby boy), and then if that didn’t work, just banning whatever the staff didn’t like that week.

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January 16, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

10 hours ago

January 17, 2025

admin

In his final address to the nation last night, President Joe Biden issued a warning that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

It is not exactly news that there is dramatic economic inequality in the United States. Economists call the period from 1933 to 1981 the “Great Compression,” for it marked a time when business regulation, progressive taxation, strong unions, and a basic social safety net compressed both wealth and income levels in the United States. Every income group in the U.S. improved its economic standing.

That period ended in 1981, when the U.S. entered a period economists have dubbed the “Great Divergence.” Between 1981 and 2021, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the offshoring of manufacturing, and the weakening of unions moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Biden tried to address this growing inequality by bringing back manufacturing, fostering competition, increasing oversight of business, and shoring up the safety net by getting Congress to pass a law—the Inflation Reduction Act—that enabled Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors with the pharmaceutical industry, capping insulin at $35 for seniors, for example. His policies worked, primarily by creating full employment which enabled those at the bottom of the economy to move to higher-paying jobs. During Biden’s term, the gap between the 90th income percentile and the 10th income percentile fell by 25%.

But Donald Trump convinced voters hurt by the inflation that stalked the country after the coronavirus pandemic shutdown that he would bring prices down and protect ordinary Americans from the Democratic “elite” that he said didn’t care about them. Then, as soon as he was elected, he turned for advice and support to one of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk, who had invested more than $250 million in Trump’s campaign.

Musk’s investment has paid off: Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported that he made more than $170 billion in the weeks between the election and December 15.

Musk promptly became the face of the incoming administration, appearing everywhere with Trump, who put him and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, where Musk vowed to cut $2 trillion out of the U.S. budget even if it inflicted “hardship” on the American people.

News broke earlier this week that Musk, who holds government contracts worth billions of dollars, is expected to have an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. And the world’s two other richest men will be with Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who together are worth almost a trillion dollars, will be joined by other tech moguls, including the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman; the CEO of the social media platform TikTok, Shou Zi Chew; and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance today, Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, billionaire Scott Bessent, said that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts was “the single most important economic issue of the day.” But he said he did not support raising the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 since 2009 although 30 states and dozens of cities have raised the minimum wage in their jurisdictions.

There have been signs lately that the American people are unhappy about the increasing inequality in the U.S. On December 4, 2024, a young man shot the chief executive officer of the health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, which has been sued for turning its claims department over to an artificial intelligence program with an error rate of 90% and which a Federal Trade Commission report earlier this week found overcharged cancer patients by more than 1,000% for life-saving drugs. Americans championed the alleged killer.

It is a truism in American history that those interested in garnering wealth and power use culture wars to obscure class struggles. But in key moments, Americans recognized that the rise of a small group of people—usually men—who were commandeering the United States government was a perversion of democracy.

In the 1850s, the expansion of the past two decades into the new lands of the Southeast had permitted the rise of a group of spectacularly wealthy men. Abraham Lincoln helped to organize westerners against a government takeover by elite southern enslavers who argued that society advanced most efficiently when the capital produced by workers flowed to the top of society, where a few men would use it to develop the country for everyone. Lincoln warned that “crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings” would crush independent men, and he created a government that worked for ordinary men, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

A generation later, when industrialization disrupted the country as westward expansion had before, the so-called robber barons bent the government to their own purposes. Men like steel baron Andrew Carnegie explained that “[t]he best interests of the race are promoted” by an industrial system, “which inevitably gives wealth to the few.” But President Grover Cleveland warned: “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

Republican president Theodore Roosevelt tried to soften the hard edges of industrialization by urging robber barons to moderate their behavior. When they ignored him, he turned finally to calling out the “malefactors of great wealth,” noting that “there is no individual and no corporation so powerful that he or it stands above the possibility of punishment under the law. Our aim is to try to do something effective; our purpose is to stamp out the evil; we shall seek to find the most effective device for this purpose; and we shall then use it, whether the device can be found in existing law or must be supplied by legislation. Moreover, when we thus take action against the wealth which works iniquity, we are acting in the interest of every man of property who acts decently and fairly by his fellows.”

Theodore Roosevelt helped to launch the Progressive Era.

But that moment passed, and in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, too, contended with wealthy men determined to retain control over the federal government. Running for reelection in 1936, he told a crowd at Madison Square Garden: “For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves…. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” he said. “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

Last night, after President Biden’s warning, Google searches for the meaning of the word “oligarchy” spiked.

—

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2025/01/15/remarks-by-president-biden-in-a-farewell-address-to-the-nation/

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/great-disparity/

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-07-10-bidens-unheralded-war-on-poverty/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unitedhealth-lawsuit-ai-deny-claims-medicare-advantage-health- insurance-denials/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/us/politics/elon-musk-white-house-trump.html

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/which-big-tech-ceos-will-be-at-trumps-inauguration-see-the-full-list/6110692/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-us-treasury-pick-bessent-says-extending-tax-cuts-top-priority-2025-01-16/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/searches-for-what-is-an-oligarchy-spike-after-bidens-warning/