Elon Musk’s claims about the risks of voter fraud in the United States presidential election prompted a flurry of concerned correspondence to election officials in a key swing state, newly released emails reveal.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s commentary on X prompted a Republican state senator and others in Pennsylvania, the most important battleground state with 19 Electoral College votes, to contact the top election official in one district to discuss concerns about overseas voting, according to the emails, which provide new insight into the billionaire’s behind-the-scenes effect on the vote.
The office of Senator Chris Gebhard in October contacted the director of elections for Lebanon County, a heavily Republican district located northwest of Philadelphia, to express the lawmaker’s “concerns with what is being communicated” about the November 5 election, the emails show.
“Can you help us out by giving us a statement? I dropped off one of the emails,” Daniel Bost, an aide to Gebhard, wrote in an October 10 email to Sean Drasher.
Bost provided Drasher with a “printout” of an X post by Musk by way of illustrating the senator’s concerns, according to an email Drasher sent to a state-level election official seeking advice on how to respond to the lawmaker.
Though it is not clear which of Musk’s posts the officials were referring to, Drasher said in his email to Jonathan Marks, Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary for elections and commissions, that it detailed “the Blue push to register overseas voters”, referring to the traditional colour of the Democratic Party.
Al Jazeera obtained the emails through a records request submitted under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law.
False claims
In the run-up to the election, Musk, one of US President-elect Donald Trump’s most powerful allies, posted prolifically on X about the supposed risks of voter fraud.
Many of those posts included false or unsubstantiated claims, such as hundreds of thousands of migrants had been flown to swing states and put on a fast-track to citizenship as part of a plan to give Democrats an electoral advantage.
Although not involving Musk, Republicans filed lawsuits in multiple states, including Pennsylvania, casting doubt on the security of overseas voting in the weeks before the vote.
In late October, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit, in which six Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania called for new checks to confirm the identities of voters overseas, ruling that the lawmakers had no justifiable reason for making their claim so close to the election and had relied on “hypothetical concerns”.
Trump also singled out overseas voting for criticism during his campaign, falsely claiming that people overseas are sent ballots “without any citizenship check or verification of identity whatsoever”.
Concerns about overseas voting
The outreach to Drasher prompted by Musk’s social media activity apparently left the election official conflicted about how to respond, in part because of his own concerns about overseas voting, according to the emails.
Drasher said that although the “tone and some of the details” of Musk’s posts did not seem credible to him, he himself had “real concerns” about the voter registration process.
“I don’t feel I can directly address Senator Gehbard [sic] without sounding foolish or uninformed,” Drasher wrote in an October 10 email to Marks.
“Ironically I’m now being confronted with something that I also wanted to call out. Could you help me understand? Or, would you be willing to address this with Sen Gebhard yourself and then fill me [in] so I also understand?”
Drasher reiterated his concerns about overseas voting registration the following day in an email to his Lebanon County colleagues.
“This puts us in a bit of an uncomfortable position because, frankly, I don’t like the UMOVA/UCOVA statutes myself,” he wrote, referring to legislation that facilitates overseas and military absentee voting.
“I want to see them changed. And in my opinion, some of the things you see out on Twitter end up being completely valid concerns. I take comfort in the fact that this affects a tiny number of voters; And in our County its [sic] barely statistically relevant.”
Drasher said that given the attention elected officials were paying to the issue, it would be “only a matter of hours before we start getting calls from constituents who will also be looking for answers”.
“I will bow to our excellent solicitor on this, but my own feedback is once again: We can only follow the law as written and we will happily enforce any changes as soon as the Legislature moves on them,” he wrote.
When contacted by Al Jazeera, Drasher said he could not remember the exact X post that had prompted the discussions in his office.
Asked to elaborate on his concerns about overseas voting, Drasher said it was his job to be concerned about “all” aspects of voter registration.
“My concern is that I need to more fully understand the process and rationale behind its structure,” he said.
Requests sent to X seeking Musk’s comment did not receive a response.
The Pennsylvania Department of State did not follow up on requests for comment.
About 4.4 million US citizens were living abroad in 2022, about 2.8 million of whom were voting age, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
Research shows voter fraud to be extremely rare in the US.
An Associated Press review of every case of potential voter fraud in six battleground states in 2020 identified 475 cases out of more than 25 million ballots cast.
