Some social media customers declare to have discovered a proof for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 election loss. They are saying billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink know-how manipulated votes to profit President-elect Donald Trump.
Starlink is an web supplier that makes use of satellites to offer connectivity; it’s a subsidiary of Musk’s business spaceflight firm SpaceX.
“Musk’s Starlink uploaded votes in swing states,” one Nov. 10 Threads post said. “Swing state voters went Dem downballot however Trump on the high? Unlikely. Starlink satellites exploding, destroying proof.”
Starlink made headlines in current weeks when the company distributed equipment to assist individuals regain web entry in hurricane-hit areas. To some, that transfer was further proof of the conspiracy.
“The Russians have entry to Starlink terminals and subsequently the satellites. The Russians are recognized hackers,” stated one other Nov. 10 Threads post. “Elon Musk and the US gov. despatched Starlink terminals to Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia because of the hurricanes.”
Different Threads users summarized the unsubstantiated claims: “Individuals are saying Elon Musk used Starlink to steal the U.S. Election for Donald Trump.”
(Screenshots/Threads)
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Election safety consultants and state and native election officers rebutted the claims, saying the 2024 presidential election was safe and there’s no proof of Starlink-related fraud.
“Starlink is suspected by conspiracy theorists not due to what it does, however as a result of Elon Musk owns it,” stated Mike Rothschild, a journalist, writer and conspiracy concept expert.
This conspiracy concept circulated on Threads amid a larger wave of election denial claims from liberals that mimic Republicans’ false claims about 2020 election fraud.
“Conspiracy theories about misplaced elections being stolen are a pure method to deal with an sudden end result,” Rothschild stated, including that it’s vital to “go away conspiracism behind and embrace actuality.”
Jen Easterly, director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, reported Nov. 6 that the company had “no proof of any malicious exercise that had a fabric affect on the safety or integrity of our election infrastructure.”
Officers from swing states that acquired Starlink know-how after the September and October hurricanes additionally stated Starlink know-how couldn’t have been used to profit Trump.
North Carolina’s tabulators and ballot-marking units are by no means linked to the web, Patrick Gannon, the North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesperson, stated. Connecting such tools to the web is prohibited by state law, he stated.
“Satellite tv for pc-based web units weren’t used to tabulate or add vote counts in North Carolina,” Gannon stated. “As well as, our tabulated outcomes are encrypted from supply to vacation spot stopping outcomes being modified in transit. We’ve no proof of any alteration of votes by anybody.”
The opposite six swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have comparable election safety protocols to make sure voting tools is rarely linked to the web throughout poll tabulation.
Even when Starlink had in some way been used to switch the vote rely, there are methods designed to catch tabulation discrepancies, together with risk-limiting audits, canvassing and certification of the election outcomes, stated Michael Specter, a Georgia Institute of Know-how assistant professor specializing in election safety.
“None of those are foolproof, however every makes it considerably much less doubtless that an assault would achieve success,” Specter stated.
Broadly talking, voting machines will not be linked to the web, consultants stated. In some states, poll tabulators are briefly linked to the web to transmit outcomes when polls shut. And in lots of locations, different election infrastructure, akin to pollbooks with lists of digital voter registration data, have web connectivity.
We discovered little proof Starlink is extensively used throughout elections. Even in Asheville, North Carolina’s Buncombe County, one of many locations hardest hit by Hurricane Helene, election officers advised PolitiFact that Starlink was not used for any election capabilities.
Genya Coulter, senior election analyst for the OSET Institute, a nonprofit targeted on correct, safe and clear elections, stated she knew Starlink know-how had been used to help election infrastructure in a single place: Tulare County, California. Trump won Tulare County with about 60% of the vote.
“A lot of the rural a part of the county has little to no entry to broadband, and Starlink was used to have the digital pollbooks linked to a county voter database,” Coulter stated. Pollbooks are lists of digital voter registration data.
Vote tabulators weren’t linked to Starlink satellite tv for pc web, she stated, including that the county had about 28,000 in-person voters.
Relating to claims about Russian hackers swaying election outcomes, Coulter stated she was “much less fearful about Russian hackers affecting vote totals and considerably extra involved” with the deluge of incorrect election info that Russian-linked groups distributed on-line earlier than the election and the bomb threats concentrating on election infrastructure that officials stated had been “of Russian origin.”
On Nov. 10, a Starlink satellite tv for pc reentered Earth’s ambiance heading southeast from Washington to Texas and exploded.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and science knowledge system group chief at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Middle, stated there’s nothing noteworthy about that.
“This isn’t a case of immediately deciding to retire this satellite tv for pc throughout the previous week,” McDowell stated. “Such reentries have been occurring nearly every day for the previous few years, they only are at random instances and random locations on the earth so not typically over the U.S. at night time the place People can see it.”
In line with U.S. Area Drive knowledge, SpaceX eliminated this explicit satellite tv for pc from operation Aug. 2, at which level the satellite tv for pc began reducing its orbit, McDowell stated. SpaceX deserted the satellite tv for pc Oct. 13, McDowell stated.
Stargazers within the Southwest United States reported seeing fireballs within the early morning hours on Nov. 10. McDowell stated that’s regular: Throughout satellite tv for pc reentry and breakup, observers can typically see fireballs transferring slowly throughout the sky.
A few of the posts that floated the Starlink conspiracy concept pointed to Democratic successes in some down-ballot races as proof that one thing was off within the Trump-Harris outcomes. Though there’s a powerful correlation between votes forged for president and senator, it’s not ironclad. Voters are free to choose candidates from different parties for various places of work, and a few fraction of voters do.
Ticket-splitting — when voters select a Democrat for one workplace and a Republican for an additional — has develop into much less widespread in current election cycles as political polarization has elevated. However the observe hasn’t disappeared solely.
Incumbency might help candidates win reelection. As an illustration, two swing states noticed Democratic incumbents hold their Senate seats: Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Jacky Rosen in Nevada. Their achievements in workplace and voters’ familiarity might need helped these candidates.
Controversy, or a scarcity thereof, can even have an effect on candidates’ campaigns. In Arizona, for instance, Republican Kari Lake got here to voters’ consideration in 2022 when she misplaced a gubernatorial race constructed closely on claims that elections are fraudulent, together with the 2020 presidential race that Biden gained. This 12 months, she misplaced to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a retired U.S. Marine and a Latino, in a marketing campaign 12 months by which Latino voters had been pivotal throughout the citizens.
Specter stated split-ticket voting “doesn’t present adequate proof that any malfeasance has occurred.”
Threads posts stated Musk’s Starlink know-how manipulated votes within the 2024 election to profit Trump.
Federal and state election officers rebutted claims of 2024 election fraud, together with claims that Starlink manipulated the vote counts.
Voting machines aren’t sometimes linked to the web, and longstanding methods guarantee votes are pretty and precisely tabulated.
We discovered just one occasion — in California, not a swing state — of Starlink know-how getting used to help election infrastructure, akin to having the digital pollbooks linked to a county voter database.
We fee these claims Pants on Hearth!
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird and North Carolina author Paul Specht contributed to this report.
This truth examine was initially published by PolitiFact, which is a part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this truth examine here.
