For months, billionaire and X proprietor Elon Musk has used his platform to share election conspiracy theories that might undermine religion within the consequence of the 2024 election. Final week, the political motion committee (PAC) Musk backs took it a step additional, launching a gaggle on X known as the Election Integrity Group. The group has almost 50,000 members and says that it’s meant to be a spot the place customers can “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see whereas voting within the 2024 election.”
In follow, it’s a cesspool of election conspiracy theories, alleging every little thing from unauthorized immigrants voting to misspelled candidate names on ballots. “It is simply an election denier jamboree,” says Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Middle for Enterprise and Human Rights at New York College, who authored a latest report on how social media facilitates political violence.
Since endorsing former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump following the primary assassination try towards him in July, Musk has turn into certainly one of Trump’s most vital monetary backers, pouring greater than $100 million into the America PAC since July. The PAC has additionally been a pillar of the Trump marketing campaign’s floor recreation in swing states. WIRED reporting discovered that Blitz Canvassing, a contractor for the PAC, was threatening canvassers in Michigan, and transporting them in U-Hauls.
Earlier in October, Musk appeared at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the place he repeated false claims that Democrats would permit undocumented immigrants to vote illegally, and inspired Trump’s supporters to vote.
In January 2021, the corporate then generally known as Twitter banned Trump’s account for incitement to violence throughout the January 6 revolt on the Capitol. However since taking on and rebranding it as X, Musk has fired lots of the individuals on the groups that labored to maintain mis- and disinformation off the platform. Final yr, X fired a lot of what remained of its elections integrity crew. After the information broke, Musk posted on X, saying, “Oh you imply the ‘Election Integrity’ Workforce that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”
Barrett says that the America PAC’s Election Integrity Group group augments the work of different election-denying teams, like former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Community. “This can be a parallel anti-election, anti-democracy marketing campaign designed to sow confusion and lay the groundwork for baseless objections to elections after Election Day. This is happening all throughout the nation, and it is extraordinarily harmful,” says Barrett. “And we’ll see the outcomes of it virtually instantly when the polls shut on November fifth.”
