Elon Musk accused of rigging the election in favor of Trump

Anti-Trump Internet users spread the rumor that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet access system had manipulated the vote count.

On X formerly Twitter and the Meta-owned Threads social network, numerous unfounded posts about fraud in key states or allegations accusing Donald Trump of cheating against Kamala Harris were shared.

These claims seemed to multiply in the days following the November 5, 2024 election and continued to surface in the week that followed.

A social network monitoring tool used by the NewsGuard website shows that the trend peaked on November 10, 2024, with 281,644 mentions of Starlink on X, the social network co-owned by Elon Musk.

The US election security agency quickly declared that there was no evidence of voter fraud in the 2024 elections.

In addition, election officials in pivotal states stated that their voting machines were not connected to the Internet, meaning that this equipment was unlikely to be the target of a Starlink cyberattack.

Nevertheless, these claims persisted when Donald Trump appointed Elon Musk on November 12 to co-direct a Department of Government Efficiency.