Billionaire Elon Musk has spoken out after Puerto Rico’s elections commission announced that it is reviewing its contract with a US electronic voting machines (EVMs) company due to numerous anomalies discovered following the island’s contentious primaries.
Musk’s comments came after Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy shared an article on X, formerly known as Twitter, regarding voting irregularities linked to electronic voting machines (EVMs).
“Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected,” Kennedy asserted, adding, “What happens in jurisdictions where there is no paper trail?”
To prevent electronic meddling in elections, Kennedy emphasized the need for paper ballots.
“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 responded to Kennedy’s post with an exclamation mark “!”.
Jeff Dornik, CEO of Pickax, commented: “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 person 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 an 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 stated 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,” the X CEO wrote.
Echoing similar sentiments, one X user wrote, “agreed,” while another stated, “We should eliminate mail-in voting and drop boxes too.”
Here’s what happened during Puerto Rico’s primaries
During 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 instances, 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.
Padilla noted that with elections coming up in November, the island needs assurance that the machines provide accurate results and that the reported outcomes match those results.
In the primaries, over 6,000 Dominion voting devices were used. According to the company, software issues arose from the electronic files used to transmit the machines’ results.