On a recent Sunday night in Virginia, Henrico County registrar Mark Coakley awaited the start of the Cowboys-Steelers NFL game that was delayed due to inclement weather.
Coakley was scanning X, formerly known as Twitter, when he came across a post by the platform’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who is a vocal Trump supporter. Musk has reposted a tweet from 2023 that falsely claimed that “Virginia’s election integrity leader” found fraudulent votes in Henrico County from the 2020 election.
“Is this accurate @CommunityNotes?” Musk posted along with the tweet, participating in X’s Community Notes feature that allows users to review tweets.
Coakley, the county’s top election official, scrambled to respond. On Monday morning, Henrico County’s X account disputed the premise of Musk’s post in a five-post thread.
“He was an unknown tweeter,” Coakley recalled in an interview with ABC News. “The media called, my friends called me.”
Challenge to Coakley: While Musk’s initial post has garnered 27.7 million views, Coakley’s response has garnered less than 100,000. It’s a contemporary spin on the old adage that a liar can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still in his shoes.
As Musk continues to promote false and misleading election information on X, election officials increasingly confront him on his own platform. But his reach is typically low compared to Musk’s 200 million followers.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X appears at the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Session at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, May 6, 2024.
David Swanson / Reuters / FILE
“This is not a fair fight,” said Larry Norden, a voting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit think tank.
In Philadelphia, Musk sent out a tweet indicating that 5,200 voters had registered with the same address. “This is crazy,” Musk commented.
Seth Bluestein, the Philadelphia County Commissioner, responded a few hours later, tweeting, “The post you shared is spreading disinformation.”
But while Musk’s initial tweet attracted nearly 10 million views, Bluestein’s response garnered less than 10,000.
Even some Republican officials have faced Musk in X. Stephen Richer, GOP recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, has regularly argued with Musk online over alleged election misinformation targeting the state – and has even been there to connect with Musk in person.
“In every previous post you’ve made about the Arizona election (everything has been wrong, but you’ve never corrected it), I’ve offered my office as a resource for you (and anyone) who wants real answers to this question,” Richer told Musk in post in September.
Sam Woolley, a disinformation researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said Musk is using X as his own “bully pulpit” to support Trump and undermine the electoral system since he takes over the company in 2022.
“This is definitely a case of a very powerful individual using not only ownership of the platform but also the ability to control large swaths of engagement on the platform for his own benefit and for the benefit of his political allies,” said Woolley.
Not only is the misinformation narrative being promoted by Musk “corrosive to democracy,” Norden said, but the time and energy required to refute it could undermine the ability of election officials to do other election-related work.
“It’s annoying,” Norden said. “We put a huge burden on election officials, and if, on top of that, they have to respond to people who add their own content to their own network to spread lies, it interferes with the important work they have to do. . That’s annoying.”
Musk did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Despite the enormous online reach of the world’s richest people, at least one election official has managed to match: Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state.
After Musk suggested at X that there were more registered voters in the state than eligible voters, Benson backtracked.
“Let’s be clear: @elonmusk is spreading dangerous disinformation,” Benson wrote. “Here’s a fact: There are no more voters than citizens in Michigan. There are 7.2 million active registered voters and 7.9 million voting-age citizens in our state.”
Musk’s initial retweet received about 32 million views.
But Benson’s response topped it, earning 33.5 million.
