The Election Integrity Community: Campaigning against anti-Democracy in the U.S. Elections, says Elon Musk

The Election Integrity Community group of America PAC is related to the work of the Election Integrity Network, which was started by a former Trump adviser. The anti-Democracy campaign is designed to spread confusion and lay the groundwork for baseless objections to elections after Election Day. This is going on all across the country, and it’s extremely dangerous,” says Barrett. “And we’re going to see the results of it almost immediately when the polls close on November 5th.”

The company that was known as Twitter banned Trump from having an account in January 2021, after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Musk has fired many of the people who worked to keep the platform clean since he took over. Most of the elections integrity team was fired by X last year. Musk said that the Election Integrity Team was trying to undermine the integrity of the election. Yeah, they’re gone.”

In October of last year, Musk was at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, where he encouraged his supporters to vote and repeated false claims that Democrats would allow illegal immigrants to vote.

It is a mix of election conspiracy theories about everything from unauthorized immigrants voting to misspelled candidate names on ballots. “It’s just an election denier jamboree and that report was about how social media facilitates political violence,” said Paul, the deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University.

For months, billionaire and X owner Elon Musk has been using his platform to share election conspiracy theories that could undermine faith in the outcome of the election. Last week, the political action committee (PAC) Musk backs took it a step further, launching a group on X called the Election Integrity Community. The group has over 50,000 members and is meant to be a place where users can report voter fraud or other issues they may see while casting their votes.

The company’s communications director said that communication was an idea that was never intended for election commission work. The job of election commission is to make sure votes are counted and voter rolls are up to date. There is a belief that misinformation is one of the largest challenges election administrators face.

While there had long been some activists sowing doubt in the voting system, Smith says that in 2020, the industry was “caught off-guard by the volume and the ferociousness of the misinformation.” False claims weren’t coming just from fringe figures but the then-sitting president and leader of the Republican Party. Fox News was repeating their claims.

Election lies aren’t gone from conservative news outlets, according to the left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters, but the tactics have changed. “The difference that we’ve seen so far in 2024 is that MAGA personalities appear to have been able to steer conversations away from specific potential defamatory claims, particularly about voting companies — even as those sorts of claims continue to circulate on social media,” Media Matters senior adviser John Whitehouse says in a statement. “The lesson for MAGA media seems to be that the core audience wants more election denial — and they’re gonna give it to them.”

Voting technology companies aren’t the only ones trying to explain how these systems work and defend their reliability. Fact-check pages operated by the states were used to pre-bunk election myths. Election authorities want voters to be able to see the system via livestreams of ballot processing facilities. In the weeks and months leading up to the election, local election offices conduct extensive testing of voting machines.

Letting voters observe the process themselves can help, says Sara Cutter, executive director of the nonpartisan trade group American Council for Election Technology (ACET). Chester County resident Jay Schneider was one of those skeptics about the election process in 2020. “To be honest, when the 2020 election came around I was thinking, ‘This seems a little sketchy, what’s been going on. There’s some shenanigans going around and around the country,’” he told Spotlight PA in a 2023 story. He became persuaded by the strength of the checks and balances in the system, so he decided to take on more of a role in the elections.

Smith agrees that personal experience with the system is valuable. It would be difficult to throw the election in the way people are saying it’s thrown because of the checks and balances.

The person and situation are what determines successful persuasion, according to Smith. He said that many people are content with learning more about the check on the elections, but for some people it doesn’t sink in.

Conspiracy theorists like Trump and Giuliani have undermined trust in the very institutions trying to restore it. The Secretary of State website is not the best place to get the facts regarding vote by mail. People don’t believe that individual.

Some false claims may stem from misunderstandings. The industry was “surprised” by calls for paper ballots, says Cutter, since “98 percent of jurisdictions” do use paper — some just have those ballots marked with electronic devices designed for greater accessibility.

Likewise, while ensuring voting machines are secure is important, these machines are just one part of a larger system. The government is similar to the American elections in that it has built-in checks and balances. “Basically no two jurisdictions are going to have the exact same mix of technology and election administration procedures that allow them to be compromised at a systemic level.”

To do significant nationwide damage, an attacker would need to familiarize themselves with countless combinations of hardware and software. Because there are processes to catch machinery that’s not working as expected, a single company like Dominion can’t just flip a switch and change election results.

A lot of people don’t ever leave this space when elections get into their blood, thanks to the backlash against voting tech companies. It is still taking a toll. She said that some ACET members had put in extra security cameras and made emergency plans for moving offices.

The other people are also preparing for the possibility of violence. The election officials in this country have stepped up security because of threats. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that election workers in Arizona have undergone active shooter drills, and an election office in Maricopa County now has armed guards and metal detectors. And even before Election Day, Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, have seen fires at ballot boxes damage hundreds of ballots.

Why is it that you want that to be false, when you believe in rigged elections? Because I still believe in America. I believe in what we do and I hope that we are able to make a difference. And I believe in American resiliency and in the accountability that we have built into our systems.”