Claim:

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network was used to calculate the state’s votes during the 2024 election, allowing him to “rigg” or “hack” the election in Trump’s favor.

Rating:

After the 2024 US presidential election, a rumor began to spread that Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and supporter of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, rigged the election result using Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company. This statement is unfoundedas will be explained below.

A post amplifying the X rumor included a video of a report on the connectivity of Tulare County in California’s Central Valley (archived):

(@JamesTate121 / X)

“Elon Musk used Starlink to hack our elections so he could have nice things while causing pain to Americans,” the post read. The video said:

Clerk Michelle Baldwin says access to connectivity has been improved this year thanks to Starlink satellite internet. She adds that technical difficulties with a tabulating machine were quickly resolved and did not affect the count. Five of the 10 volunteers assigned to the polling site in Exeter did not show up, but Baldwin says all sites continued to operate without problems.

This X post has gained 214,500 views and 7,600 likes at the time of writing, but this claim and the questions surrounding it have appeared several times on the social media platform as well as on Redditand TikTok.

The video was part a longer news report from ABC30a television station in Fresno, California. The report indicated that the election process went well in Tulare County, a rural part of the state. But the wave of suspicion also reached Snopes readers, who emailed us asking us to confirm whether Musk had indeed used his company to rig the election.

One post on X (archived) was referring to a nine-minute video by TikTok user @etheria77 that it said had been viewed 1.6 million times. Although I couldn’t find the video on the user’s TikTok profile page – another video on November 11, 2024 saying he had been removed—she appeared on X (archived):

(@AesPolitics1/X)

In the video, the user claimed to have her “CCIE” – the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert certification, a notoriously difficult certification to obtain, with a pass rate of about 26%. “California and other swing states were able to use Starlink to calculate and count ballots in their state,” she said.

Many who watched the video called for the allegations to be investigated, arguing that it was unethical for a company owned by a Trump supporter to be involved in the election process.

Fueling the claims was another video by podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump before the election. In it, Rogan claimed that Musk had an app that allowed him to confirm election results four hours before they were announced (archived):

Apparently Elon created an app and knew who won the election four hours before the results. So as the results were coming in, four hours before they called, Dana White told me that Elon said, “I’m leaving, it’s over, Donald won.”

But the reality is that the vast majority of voting machines do not have connectivity as such Federal certification requires voting systems to be “charged” from other networks — that is, completely independent. It also does not allow equipment equipped with wireless technology such as Starlink, WiFi or Bluetooth.

When ballot scanners are connected to anything, it is usually a closed network, used only to transmit unofficial results after the polls have closed and the memory cards are removed to count the votes for the official results. As such, a connection to Starlink is impossible, according to several experts and election officials.

For example, one of the federal ones Electoral Assistance Commission (EAC) approved manufacturers of voting systems is Clear Ballot, which guarantees that its machines are on a “closed network” — that is, they are not connected to the internet, wi-fi or bluetooth. In addition, it guarantees that the data stored in the machines is encrypted and that each machine keeps a log of who accessed it.

We reviewed voting system security measures in all seven swing states.

In North Carolina, the law forbids any voting system to be connected to any network:

No voting system used in any election in this state shall be connected to a network and any feature that permits connection to a network shall be disabled. Prohibited network connections include the Internet, intranet, fax, telephone line, modem networks, or any other wired or wireless connection.

Patrick Gannon, director of public information for the North Carolina Board of Elections, answered our question in an email:

Satellite-based Internet devices were not used to tabulate or upload vote counts in North Carolina. Additionally, our tabulated results are encrypted from source to destination, preventing results from being altered in transit. Additionally, tabulators and vote marking devices are never connected to the Internet in North Carolina. In fact, it is prohibited by state law.

We have no evidence of any vote tampering by anyone. We ask, again, that people stop spreading false information about the election.

In Georgia, the devices don’t even connect to the internet. Conformable Georgia Secretary of State website:

The paper ballot system protects Georgia against computer hackers and provides reliable, auditable election results using paper ballots.

• The devices do not connect to the Internet, which limits cybersecurity risks. They also create an auditable paper ballot with other enhanced review capabilities for the public.
• Dominion product security protocols meet or exceed the US Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting System requirements.
• The paper ballot system uses encryption, multi-factor authentication and role-based access controls.

Pennsylvania also warrants that “Voting systems are never connected to the internetand each vote cast on a voting machine is recorded on a user-verifiable file paper ballot.”

“Counties do not use Starlink to transmit unofficial or official election results,” Matt Heckel, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said in an email. “No voting system in Pennsylvania is ever connected to the Internet”

Arizonaanother swing state, also explains that its voting machines are “isolated”: “In Arizona, the election systems (computerized systems that schedule elections and count votes) are disconnected, meaning they are never connected to other networks , such as Internet or office networks.”

Michiganin the meantime, apply similar security measures:

Voting machines cannot be connected to the Internet during the registration of ballots. Only after the count is finished and a paper record has been generated will some jurisdictions connect the machines to the Internet to send unofficial results to the county clerk.

Nevada also provides that “its voting system is an ‘independent system’ that is not connected to a network, the Internet, and has no wireless connection capabilities.”

Finally Wisconsin is one of the states using a closed network to transmit unofficial results, but says its voting machines are not connected:

Voting systems used in Wisconsin are federally tested and certified, except for systems that transmit unofficial results. Voting systems equipped with cellular modems have not received federal certification.

We’ve reached out to officials in the other five swing states to ask if the election went smoothly, and we’ll update this report if they hear back.

As for Tulare County in California, it featured the same journalist who did the report that raised suspicions a new report on November 12 indicating they have asked county officials about these concerns.

“In California. It is actually illegal for any part of the voting system to be connected to the internet. As such, our voting system operates in a completely open air environment. It means it is completely isolated from the internet and any other network,” Stephanie. Hill, the systems and procedures analyst for the Tulare County Register of Voters, told ABC30.

The day after the election, on November 6, 2024, the director of the Cyber ​​Security Infrastructure Security Agency Jen Easterly released a statement reiterating that the elections were safe:

As we have said time and time again, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community has never been better prepared to provide safe, secure, free and fair elections for the American people. This is what we saw yesterday in the peaceful and safe exercise of democracy. Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity that has had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.

We also contacted Verified Voting, a non-governmental, non-partisan foundation dedicated to “promoting the responsible use of technology in elections.” In an emailed statement, they explained that while Starlink was used in some localities, its use was in no way linked to existing voting systems (our emphasis):

Starlink provided connectivity in a number of jurisdictions for Electronic Poll Registers (EPBs) in this election.

Neither Starlink nor other types of communication networks play any role in the counting of votes. Most votes are counted on scanners that do not have an Internet connection, and then election officials use memory cards to transfer the results to the central tabulator. The scanners also produce printed records of their vote totals before transmission. Most states, including all so-called swing states, use paper ballots or records that voters can verify, and routinely review some of those ballots by hand to verify the count. Our choices produce huge amounts of physical evidence. A satellite system like Starlink can’t steal that.

The initial election results from voting at the polling station are unofficial. These very local results are compiled with all the results from a jurisdiction, such as a county, but before the collected results are finalized, there are processes to reconcile the number of voters with the number of ballots. In the past, the results of the polling stations were communicated to the electoral office of the county by means of a modem. This practice of submitting results electronically is somewhat rare, but regardless, none of those electronically submitted results are official final results. Paper ballots counted by tabulators provide evidence of paper voters’ choices. Audits and/or recounts examine that physical evidence.