Election officials, concerned about misinformation, confront Elon Musk on his own turf

(NEW YORK) — On a recent Sunday night in Virginia, Henrico County registrar Mark Coakley was waiting for 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 had reposted a tweet from 2023 that falsely claimed that “election integrity leaders in Virginia” found fraudulent votes in Henrico County from the 2020 election.

“Is this accurate @CommunityNotes?” Musk posted in conjunction with the tweet, engaging X’s Community Notes feature that allows users themselves to fact check a tweet.

Coakley, the county’s top election official, scrambled to respond. On Monday morning, the Henrico County’s X account debunked the premise of Musk’s posts in a five-post thread.

“They were uninformed tweets,” Coakley recalled in an interview with ABC News. “Media was calling, friends were calling me.”

The challenge for Coakley: While Musk’s initial post has garnered 27.7 million views, Coakley’s response has received fewer than 100,000. It’s a contemporary spin on the old adage that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

As Musk has continued to promote false and misleading election information on X, election officials have increasingly confronted him on his own platform. But their reach typically pales in comparison to Musk’s 200 million followers.

“It’s just not a fair battle,” said Larry Norden, a voting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit think tank.

In Philadelphia, Musk reposted a tweet suggesting that 5,200 voters had registered with the same address. “This is crazy,” Musk commented.

Seth Bluestein, a Philadelphia County Commissioner, replied hours later, tweeting, “The post you shared is spreading disinformation.”

But while Musk’s initial tweet drew nearly 10 million views, Bluestein’s response garnered fewer than 10,000.

Even some Republican officials have confronted Musk on X. Stephen Richer, the GOP recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, has regularly quarreled with Musk online over alleged election misinformation targeting the state — and has even offered to connect with Musk in person.

“On every previous post you’ve made about Arizona elections (all of which have been wrong, but you’ve never corrected any of them), I’ve offered my office as a resource to you (and anyone) who wants actual answers to these questions,” Richer told Musk in a post in September.

Sam Woolley, a disinformation researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said Musk has treated X as his own “bully pulpit” to support Trump and denigrate the election system since taking control of the company in 2022.

“This is certainly a case of a very powerful individual using not only his ownership of the platform but also his ability to control massive swaths of engagement on the platform for his own benefit and for the benefit of his political allies,” Woolley said.

Not only are the misinformation narratives promoted by Musk “corrosive to democracy,” Norden said, but the time and energy required to rebut them might actually undermine election officials’ ability to execute their other election-related work.

“It’s distracting,” Norden said. “We are putting a huge load on election officials, and if, on top of that, they have to respond to a guy who boosts his own content on his own network to spread lies, it’s distracting from the essential work that they need to do. That is troubling.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

Despite the enormous online reach of the world’s richest man, at least one election official has managed to match it: Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state in Michigan.

After Musk suggested on X that there are more registered voters in the state than eligible voters, Benson shot back.

“Let’s be clear: @elonmusk is spreading dangerous disinformation,” Benson wrote. “Here are the facts: There aren’t more voters than citizens in Michigan. There are 7.2 million active registered voters and 7.9 citizens of voting age in our state.”

Musk’s initial retweet received some 32 million views.

But Benson’s response topped it, getting 33.5 million.