Elon Musk's viral lie about the 2024 election uses bogus data

Elon Musk in Krakow, Poland, on January 22, 2024. (Photo by STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In October 2022, Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter. He then dramatically changed the algorithm to boost his own tweets. The new algorithm, according to a February 2023 report by Platformer, "artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed."

Musk is now using his dominant presence on the social network, which he has renamed X, to convince people that the 2024 presidential election is rigged. His efforts dovetail with the lies of Donald Trump, who recently claimed that Democrats are "allowing" undocumented immigrants to enter the country and "signing them up to vote."

Musk promoted a post from @EndWokeness, a popular account that promotes bigoted conspiracy theories, that claimed to have uncovered "data" showing that hundreds of thousands of "illegals" have registered to vote since the start of 2024. Musk shared @EndWokeness' post with his 170 million followers and called it "extremely concerning." 

According to X, thanks to Musk's promotion, over 100 million people have viewed the claims in this post. The only problem is that the entire thing is bunk. 

To begin, "illegals" cannot get a Social Security number. Most people who have Social Security numbers are citizens. In some instances, non-citizens can receive a Social Security number — usually in connection with a work authorization — but only if they are legally present in the United States. The idea that using a Social Security number to register to vote is evidence of undocumented status makes no sense. 

Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) is part of a process that allows people to register to vote by providing their Social Security number, name, and date of birth. That information is then passed from the state Department of Motor Vehicles to the Social Security Administration, which checks to make sure that the information is valid and that the individual is not deceased. 

Critically, every "transaction" using the HAVV process does not equate to a newly registered voter. A November 2010 report by the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General "found that 2.4 million (32 percent) of the 7.7 million HAVV transactions submitted by 25 States related to the same voter data being re-submitted 10 or more times." In 2008, according to the report, "Ohio submitted the same voter information 1,778 times during the year for a 77-year-old man who died in December 2005." Then, in 2009, "Ohio continued to submit this applicant’s information 13,824 times." On one day in 2008, Illinois submitted the same voter to HAVV 342 times. 

This helps explain why the numbers cited by @EndWokeness dramatically exceed the total number of newly registered voters in 2024 in each state. According to the Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, as of April 3, "voter rolls have increased by 57,711 voters since the beginning of 2024." That represents all newly registered voters — not just the much smaller number that registered to vote without a drivers license. There are similar discrepancies in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Even if a non-citizen were able to register without a driver’s license in Texas, Pennsylvania, or Arizona, that would not enable them to vote. All three states require voters to present identification that establishes their citizenship and state residency. (In Pennsylvania, this is only required when voting for the first time.) The entire conspiracy theory is incoherent. 

Non-citizen voting is extraordinarily rare

Musk is trying to convince people that non-citizen voting is a severe threat to democracy. The truth is that it almost never happens. 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. 

In March, Musk accused Biden of committing "treason" by chartering flights full of undocumented immigrants with the intention of registering them to vote. The flights did not exist. 

Musk's absurd approach to fact-checking

Musk promotes X's Community Notes feature as a way of identifying misinformation. Community Notes allows users to flag misinformation and write a correction. In certain cases, the Community Note is appended to the post itself. 

But Musk's post about HAVV and his other false claims do not feature any publicly available Community Notes. That's because Musk has designed Community Notes to make it virtually impossible for his posts to be fact-checked. 

Musk has a cult following on X who agree with his reactionary politics and defend his claims, no matter how outlandish. Community Notes are displayed publicly only if there is a consensus among people who normally disagree. That means, even if thousands of people agree that Musk is lying, a Community Note will not be displayed unless Musk's loyal supporters also agree it should be displayed. Here is how X describes its approach:

To find notes that are helpful to the broadest possible set of people, Community Notes takes into account not only how many contributors rated a note as helpful or unhelpful, but also whether people who rated it seem to come from different perspectives.

Community Notes assesses "different perspectives" entirely based on how people have rated notes in the past… If people who typically disagree in their ratings agree that a given note is helpful, it's probably a good indicator the note is helpful to people from different points of view.

The practical impact of this policy is that very few Community Notes are displayed publicly, especially not on political posts by Elon Musk.