Elon Musk is giddy to elevate right-wing talking points about alleged rampant election fraud ahead of November.
Taking a page from Donald Trump’s book this past week, Musk has been up late, firing off various fearmongering tweets about requiring paper ballots, in-person voting, and hand-counting ballots.
It’s no coincidence. The House will vote Wednesday on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, sponsored by Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee and Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy. Ahead of the vote, the GOP is trying to whip up controversy about election fraud.
The bill would require a Real ID or U.S. passport for voting, rather than the standard driver’s license, in an effort to tamp down on noncitizen voting. The bill also calls for states to purge noncitizens from their rolls and even have Homeland Security deport anyone unlawfully registered.
Additionally, just this week, Republicans announced they’ll put the issue of proof of citizenship in their party platform at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week.
You wouldn’t know it to hear Republicans talk, but it’s already a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. What’s more, noncitizen voting is incredibly rare, making up only about 0.0001 percent of the votes cast in state elections in 2016, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Even the Cato Institute says “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.”
Nevertheless, Republicans and their allies are running with the conspiracy theory that Democrats are using immigrants to steal the elections, combining two of their favorite topics: voter fraud and the border. “Why are Democrats so adamantly against ensuring only American citizens vote in our elections?” Speaker Mike Johnson wrote Monday on X (formerly Twitter). “They want to turn illegal aliens into voters. We must pass the SAVE Act to prevent this.”
Musk then reposted Johnson, writing: “Those who oppose this are traitors. All Caps: TRAITORS. What is the penalty for traitors again?”
At 2 a.m. Tuesday morning, Musk quote-tweeted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who wrote, “There is no hiding it now. Biden and the Democrats want illegal immigrants to vote in the election this November. Our elections are NOT safe from mass interference as long as states do not require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.”
As the owner of X, Elon is not only pushing this rhetoric on his site, but he is actually taking steps to help Trump and Republicans stop nonexistent voter fraud. Along with billionaire Nelson Peltz, Musk aims to present Trump with a “data-driven” election-oversight system.
As Elon would say, it’s all looking “extremely concerning”!
