Eliminate electronic voting machines! – Elon Musk

Elon Musk, owner of Platform X, has lent his full support to eliminating electronic voting machines from all elections. He signaled that support on X, in reply to a concern Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. raised about the recent primary elections in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

What did the electronic voting machines do in Puerto Rico?

Mr. Kennedy referred, and linked, to an Associated Press story, dated June 11, 2024 – nine days after the Puerto Rico primary. Kennedy observed that a “paper trail” led to the detection of “hundreds of voting irregularities.” He then asked what happens in jurisdictions without such paper trails? Kennedy concluded that, if elected President, he would “require” paper ballots – presumably hand-counted.

Elon Musk, noticing this, quote-posted it and offered a post of his own in full support of the Kennedy position.

Several electronic voting machines reported lower vote totals than the actual number of paper ballots cast and scanned. Some scanner-tabulators reversed the winner and loser, or reported no votes at all for some candidates.

Dominion Voting Systems is the vendor of choice on Puerto Rico. The alternate president of the Puerto Rico election commission identified a “software issue” as the culprit in the discrepancies the commission observed.

Dominion Voting Systems’ contract expires June 30. The election commission is reviewing that contract and might not renew it.

The concern is that we obviously have elections in November, and we must provide the (island) not only with the assurance that the machine produces a correct result, but also that the result it produces is the same one that is reported. Jessica Padilla Rivera, interim president, Puerto Rico election commission

Dominion Voting Systems is notorious for what most observers describe as “security vulnerabilities.” J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan famously demonstrated these “vulnerabilities” in open court. But Activist David Clements is not satisfied that replacing Dominion with another electronic voting machines vendor would serve. In his movie Let My People Go, he asserts that the ultimate source of nation-wide vote-result tampering lies beyond Dominion or Election Systems and Software, Dominion’s competitor.

Puerto Rico results – and tabulation delays

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (D-P.R.) lost in a stunning upset to Del. Jenniffer González (R-P.R.), according to another AP story. The campaign, by all accounts, was acrimonious to the point of savagery. But overshadowing the results (56 percent to 44 percent for the winner) was that, as of Monday (June 3, vote tabulation was not finished.

In fact, the Web page for the Puerto Rico election commission crashed late Sunday. Officials of the Department of Homeland Security were involved in trying to correct the problem. Power failed at more than a dozen voting precincts, forcing at least one precinct to fall back on manual counting of paper ballots. This paper trail, and the heavier than usual reliance upon it, led to the detection of the discrepant results.

Spot audits of electronic voting machines rarely, if ever, take place, and usually by reason of power issues. This is consistent with Kennedy’s worry about “jurisdictions [lacking] a paper trail.” CNAV has studied voting issues extensively and, last year, produced this report describing the French method of hand-counted paper-ballot elections.