Elon Musk calls for the “elimination” of EVMs, citing “risk of hacking by humans and AI”

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Saturday called for the scrapping of electronic voting machines (EVMs), saying they can be hacked by humans or artificial intelligence.

“Electronic voting machines should be abolished. The risk of human or AI hacking is small, but still too high,” Musk said, quoting a post by US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who first wrote about fraudulent electronic voting machines during the Puerto Rican election.

“The Puerto Rican primary election saw hundreds of cases of voter fraud linked to electronic voting machines. Fortunately, there were paper records, so the problems were identified and the vote counts corrected,” US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a post on X. Associated Press.

“What happens in places where there is no paper voting record? Americans need to know that every vote they cast will be counted and that the election cannot be hacked. We need to go back to paper ballots to avoid electronic interference in our elections,” he added.

“My administration will mandate paper ballots and ensure honest and fair elections,” he said.

The Puerto Rican Elections Commission announced on Tuesday that it would review its contract with a U.S. electronic voting company after discovering numerous inconsistencies in the voting results following the island's contested primary elections.

The problem stemmed from a software issue that caused machines supplied by Dominion Voting Systems to miscalculate vote totals, said Jessica Padilla Rivera, interim president of Puerto Rico's voting authority. Associated Press.

Notably, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in 2021, alleging that the cable news giant falsely claimed the voting company rigged the 2020 election in an effort to boost its sagging ratings.

Fox News agreed to pay about $800 million in 2023 to Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems Inc. The lawsuit was meant to expose how the network spread lies about the 2020 presidential election. Fox acknowledged in a statement “the court's finding that certain allegations about Dominion are false,” but did not offer an apology after the lawsuit was settled.

Some Fox News employees falsely accused Dominion of rigging votes in Venezuela using algorithms in its voting machines designed to rig elections for the late dictator Hugo Chavez.

Dominion employees, from software engineers to its founder, have been harassed — some have received death threats — and the company has suffered “enormous and irreparable economic harm,” lawyers said in the 2021 lawsuit.

One employee, Eric Coomer, told The Associated Press that the false claims had forced him into hiding after he received death threats. He filed a lawsuit against the Trump campaign, conservative media columnists and the conservative media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.

(Courtesy of the Associated Press)