Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, appeared to encourage a form of voter fraud in a post on X.
“The Democrats have given us another option. You don’t have to register to vote,” Musk’s mother wrote in the Oct. 5 post. “On Election Day, have 10 fake names, go to 10 polling booths and vote 10 times. That’s 100 votes, and it’s not illegal. Maybe we should work the system too.”
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Musk called the post sarcastic in response to criticism and didn’t delete it.
It appeared to echo conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud that have been shared by Elon Musk. In reality, investigations have found voter fraud to be rare. Democrats haven’t been found to be orchestrating an operation of the type Maye Musk mentioned.
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If voters were to follow her call to “work the system too,” they would most likely be in violation of election law, said Nate Persily, an election expert at Stanford Law School and an NBC News contributor.
Title 52 of the U.S. Code says it is illegal to use false information to register to vote. Violations are punishable by $10,000 fines or up to five years’ imprisonment.
What’s more, a fake name isn’t enough to get you on the voter rolls. Registering to vote requires proof of identity, such as a driver’s license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number. Election officials check that information, and if voters don’t provide it, they will be asked for utility bills or other proof of residency depending on the state.
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Musk's post was flagged with a “Community Note” that pointed out that registering to vote under a false name and casting more than one vote “is, in fact, illegal.” The Federal Election Commission declined to comment on Musk's post or whether it was investigating it.
The code, however, doesn’t appear to forbid Maye Musk’s statements of encouragement, Persily said.
“There is a lot of untrue information that circulates on social media with respect to voting,” he said. “The fact that someone makes an exaggerated statement like this does not seem to me like it’s a prosecutable offense.”
Three hours after the original post, Maye Musk made another one telling users to ignore the first one. She also replied in comments to various users concerned about the misinformation in her post, saying they “don’t understand sarcasm” and adding that “this comes from Gavin Newsom,” the California governor, who signed off on Senate Bill 1174, which prevents local governments from imposing voter ID requirements in local elections.
Elon Musk has similarly condemned the bill in various posts on X, including one in which he wrote that “they just made PREVENTING voter fraud against the law” and compared Newsom, a Democrat, to “The Joker.”
Persily said many states, including New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota, don’t require voters to take identification to the polls and that, even so, there is no evidence that there are different rates of fraud between states that have more lenient voter identification laws and those with stricter ones.
Maye Musk’s post was made the day her son spoke at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania — where Trump was injured in an assassination attempt in July.
At Saturday’s rally, as he encouraged people in the crowd to vote, Elon Musk said that “if they don’t, this will be the last election.” His mother’s post on X was also a response to one of his posts pushing people to register to vote, reminding them of the deadline to so in Georgia.
In his speech at the rally, Musk reiterated his disapproval for legislation that doesn’t require voter identification.
“You got 14 states now that don’t require voter ID,” Musk said. “California, where I used to live, just passed a law banning voter ID for voting. I still can’t believe that’s real. So, how you supposed to have a good, proper election if there’s no ID? It’s meaningless.”
Critics of laws requiring voter ID say the requirements prevent turnout of eligible voters who may not have government-issued forms of ID like driver’s licenses because of financial or other constraints. Proponents of the laws say they prevent voter fraud, which studies have found to be extremely rare.
Musk endorsed Trump’s campaign on X after the assassination attempt in July, and he has since joined other tech millionaires in vowing to donate to the pro-Trump super PAC America PAC, which he started.
Musk’s posts on X about the election, many of which have been deemed false or misleading, have generated around 1.2 billion views, according to a report by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. None of the 50 posts from Musk containing misinformation that researchers from the center analyzed this year were flagged with community notes correcting or adding context to his claims.
“It is quite clear that there is a substantial minority of the American population that does not believe the election will be run with integrity or that the results can be trusted,” Persily said. “And it is extremely difficult to counteract those beliefs when people with large megaphones are spreading falsehoods. Ultimately, the real question is whether the people will act on these kinds of posts.”
Elon and Maye Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jane C. Timm contributed.
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