Getty Photos | Nathan Stirk
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson yesterday issued an announcement debunking claims of widespread voter fraud that have been amplified by X proprietor Elon Musk on the social community previously named Twitter. Election officers in two different states additionally disputed the “extraordinarily false” data shared by Musk.
Musk is usually a giant fan of Texas, however on Tuesday he shared a put up by the account “Finish Wokeness” that claimed, “The variety of voters registering with out a photograph ID is SKYROCKETING in 3 key swing states: Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania.” The account claimed there have been 1.25 million such registrations in Texas for the reason that starting of 2024, over 580,000 in Pennsylvania, and over 220,000 in Arizona.
“Extraordinarily regarding,” Musk wrote in a retweet re-X. The Finish Wokeness put up shared by Musk prompt that “illegals” are registering to vote in massive numbers through the use of Social Safety numbers that may be obtained for work authorizations. The Finish Wokeness put up has been considered 63 million occasions thus far, and Musk’s re-post has been considered 58.2 million occasions.
Nelson’s assertion on the Texas authorities’s web site referred to as the declare “completely inaccurate.” For one factor, the actual variety of voter registrations is a small fraction of the quantity claimed within the put up shared by Musk, the secretary of state wrote:
It’s completely inaccurate that 1.2 million voters have registered to vote in Texas with out a photograph ID this yr. The reality is our voter rolls have elevated by 57,711 voters for the reason that starting of 2024. That is lower than the variety of individuals registered in the identical timeframe in 2022 (about 65,000) and in 2020 (about 104,000).
“Extraordinarily false”
The Texas Secretary of State workplace studies having 17,948,242 registered voters for the March 2024 elections, a acquire of slightly below 189,000 voters since November 2023. The entire acquire over the previous 24 months is just a little over 764,000.
Pennsylvania’s knowledge exhibits the state has 8.7 million registered voters and 87,440 voter registrations thus far in 2024. Most of these have been functions for get together adjustments, whereas the opposite 39,877 have been new-voter registrations.
Arizona’s complete variety of registered voters has been declining. Whereas Arizona had 4.28 million registered voters in 2020 and 4.14 million in 2022, the state’s tally in March 2024 was 4,096,260.
Musk’s “Extraordinarily regarding” put up acquired a reply from Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who referred to as it “extremely false.”
“We’ve not even had that many new registrants TOTAL in 2024 in Arizona,” acknowledged Richer, an elected official and Republican who has been lively in calling out election misinformation on X. “And we’ve fewer than 35,000 registrants (out of 4.1 million registered voters in Arizona) who have not supplied documented proof of citizenship.”
Musk’s platform has confronted loads of criticism over its moderation of misinformation on elections and different subjects. After studies of deep cuts to X’s election integrity staff in September 2023, Musk claimed the ex-X staff have been “undermining election integrity.”