Elon Musk raises concerns over EVMs as US heads to presidential polls, says ‘there’s risk of…’

Billionaire Elon Musk has spoken out after Puerto Rico’s elections commission informed that it’s evaluating its contract with a US electronic voting company after hundreds of anomalies were found following the contentious primaries on the island.

Elon Musk’s response comes after Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy shared an article about voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines (EVMs) in a post on X, formerly Twitter.(REUTERS)

Musk’s response comes after Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy shared an article about voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines (EVMs) in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected,” he asserted, while asking, “What happens in jurisdictions where there is no paper trail?”

In order to prevent electronic meddling in elections, Kennedy stated that paper ballots must be used.

“US citizens need to know that every one of their votes were counted, and that their elections cannot be hacked. We need to return to paper ballots to avoid electronic interference with elections My administration will require paper ballots and we will guarantee honest and fair elections,” he concluded.

Musk first reacted to Kennedy’s post with an exclamation mark “!”.

Jeff Dornik, CEO of Pickax, wrote: “Not only paper ballots, but the most important thing is following chain of custody laws. So many states are not being strict about that which allows for shenanigans or at the very least the appearance of the potential of irregularities. Please incorporate chain of custody laws into your plans to secure our elections.”

“This should have been federal law decades ago,” one more commented, while another said, “Paper ballots, but do you also expect all votes to be counted by midnight? Not possible.”

Responding to the query of X user, Dornik said, “It was possible before machines came out.”

Elon Musk shares his view on EVMs

Sharing Kennedy’s post on X, Tesla CEO Musk voiced his opinion on EVMs, stressing that they should be eliminated. He went on say that EVMs can be hacked by artificial intelligence or humans.

“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” X CEO wrote.

Expressing similar views, with one X user wrote, “agreed”, while another stated, “We should eliminate mail-in voting and drop boxes too.”

Also Read: Elon Musk’s shout out to Donald Trump in Tesla meeting: ‘He calls me for no reason’

Here’s what happened during Puerto Rico’s primaries

Puerto Rico’s primaries, the Dominion Voting Systems-supplied EVMs miscalculated vote totals due to a software glitch, according to the commission’s interim president, Jessika Padilla Rivera.

While the June 2 primary results that accurately identify the winners are uncontested, in several situations the machine-reported vote totals were less than the paper ones, and in other cases the machine-reported totals overturned or indicated zero votes for certain contenders.

The issue, according to Padilla, is that there will be elections in November. As such, the island needs to be guaranteed not just that the machine yields accurate results but also that the outcomes it yields match those that are reported.

In the primaries, over 6,000 Dominion voting devices were used. According to the firm, software problems were caused by the electronic files that were used for transmitting the machines’ results.