Some social media customers declare to have discovered a proof for Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 election loss. They are saying billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink know-how manipulated votes to profit President-elect Donald Trump.
Starlink is an web supplier that makes use of satellites to offer connectivity; it’s a subsidiary of Musk’s business spaceflight firm SpaceX.
“Musk’s Starlink uploaded votes in swing states,” one November 10 Threads submit mentioned. “Swing state voters went Dem downballot however Trump on the prime? Unlikely. Starlink satellites exploding, destroying proof.”
Starlink made headlines in latest weeks when the corporate distributed gear to assist individuals regain web entry in hurricane-hit areas. To some individuals, that transfer was further proof of the conspiracy.
“The Russians have entry to Starlink terminals and due to this fact the satellites. The Russians are identified hackers,” mentioned one other November 10 Threads submit. “Elon Musk and the US gov. despatched Starlink terminals to Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia as a result of hurricanes.”
Different Threads customers summarised the unsubstantiated claims: “Persons are saying Elon Musk used Starlink to steal the US Election for Donald Trump.”
These posts have been flagged as a part of Meta’s efforts to fight false information and misinformation on its Information Feed. (Learn extra about PolitiFact’s partnership with Meta, which owns Fb, Instagram and Threads.)
Election safety specialists and state and native election officers rebutted the claims, saying the 2024 presidential election was safe and there’s no proof of Starlink-related fraud.
“Starlink is suspected by conspiracy theorists not due to what it does, however as a result of Elon Musk owns it,” Mike Rothschild, a journalist, writer and conspiracy concept knowledgeable, mentioned.
This conspiracy concept circulated on Threads amid a bigger wave of election denial claims from liberals that mimic Republicans’ false claims about 2020 election fraud.
“Conspiracy theories about misplaced elections being stolen are a pure approach to deal with an sudden final result,” Rothschild mentioned, including that it’s vital to “go away conspiracism behind and embrace actuality”.
Election infrastructure is safe
Jen Easterly, director of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, reported on November 6 that the company had “no proof of any malicious exercise that had a cloth impression on the safety or integrity of our election infrastructure”.
Officers from swing states that acquired Starlink know-how after the September and October hurricanes additionally mentioned Starlink know-how couldn’t have been used to profit Trump.
North Carolina’s tabulators and ballot-marking gadgets are by no means linked to the web, Patrick Gannon, the North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesperson, mentioned. State regulation prohibits connecting such gear to the web, he added.
“Satellite tv for pc-based web gadgets weren’t used to tabulate or add vote counts in North Carolina,” Gannon mentioned. “As well as, our tabulated outcomes are encrypted from supply to vacation spot stopping outcomes being modified in transit. We’ve got no proof of any alteration of votes by anybody.”
The opposite six swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – have comparable election safety protocols to make sure voting gear isn’t linked to the web throughout poll tabulation.
Even when Starlink had one way or the other been used to switch the vote rely, there are methods designed to catch tabulation discrepancies, together with risk-limiting audits, canvassing and certification of the election outcomes, mentioned Michael Specter, a Georgia Institute of Know-how assistant professor specialising in election safety.
“None of those are foolproof, however every makes it considerably much less doubtless that an assault would achieve success,” Specter mentioned.
Broadly talking, voting machines will not be linked to the web, specialists mentioned. In some states, poll tabulators are briefly linked to the web to transmit outcomes when polls shut. And in lots of locations, different election infrastructure, similar to pollbooks with lists of digital voter registration data, has web connectivity.
We discovered little proof Starlink is broadly used throughout elections. Even in Asheville, North Carolina’s Buncombe County, one of many locations hardest hit by Hurricane Helene, election officers instructed PolitiFact that Starlink was not used for any election features.
Genya Coulter, senior election analyst for the OSET Institute, a nonprofit group centered on correct, safe and clear elections, mentioned she knew Starlink know-how had been used to help election infrastructure in a single place: Tulare County, California. Trump gained Tulare County with about 60 % of the vote.
“A lot of the rural a part of the county has little to no entry to broadband, and Starlink was used to have the digital pollbooks linked to a county voter database,” Coulter mentioned. Pollbooks are lists of digital voter registration data.
Vote tabulators weren’t linked to Starlink satellite tv for pc web, she mentioned, including that the county had about 28,000 in-person voters.
Concerning claims about Russian hackers swaying election outcomes, Coulter mentioned she was “much less nervous about Russian hackers affecting vote totals and considerably extra involved” with the deluge of incorrect election info that Russian-linked teams distributed on-line earlier than the election and the bomb threats concentrating on election infrastructure that officers mentioned have been “of Russian origin”.
What about experiences of a Starlink satellite tv for pc fireball?
On November 10, a Starlink satellite tv for pc reentered Earth’s environment heading southeast from Washington to Texas and exploded.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and science knowledge system group chief at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Middle, mentioned there’s nothing noteworthy about that.
“This isn’t a case of immediately deciding to retire this satellite tv for pc inside the previous week,” McDowell mentioned. “Such reentries have been taking place virtually day by day for the previous few years, they simply are at random occasions and random locations on this planet so not usually over the US at night time the place Individuals can see it.”
Based on US House Power knowledge, SpaceX eliminated this specific satellite tv for pc from operation on August 2, at which level the satellite tv for pc began reducing its orbit, McDowell mentioned. SpaceX deserted the satellite tv for pc on October 13, McDowell added.
Stargazers in southwest United States reported seeing fireballs within the early morning hours of November 10. McDowell mentioned that’s regular: Throughout satellite tv for pc reentry and breakup, observers can typically see fireballs transferring slowly throughout the sky.
Why Democrats gained Senate races whereas Trump gained the presidency
A number of the posts that floated the Starlink conspiracy concept pointed to Democratic successes in some down-ballot races as proof that one thing was off within the Trump-Harris outcomes. Though there’s a robust correlation between votes solid for president and senator, it’s not ironclad. Voters are free to decide on candidates from totally different events for various places of work, and a few fraction of voters do.
Ticket-splitting – when voters select a Democrat for one workplace and a Republican for one more – has turn into much less frequent in latest election cycles as political polarisation has elevated. However the follow hasn’t disappeared solely.
Incumbency will help candidates win re-election. For example, two swing states had Democratic incumbents maintain their Senate seats: Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Jacky Rosen in Nevada. Their achievements in workplace and voters’ familiarity may need helped these candidates.
Controversy, or a scarcity thereof, may also have an effect on candidates’ campaigns. In Arizona, for instance, Republican Kari Lake got here to voters’ consideration in 2022 when she misplaced a gubernatorial race constructed closely on claims that elections are fraudulent, together with the 2020 presidential race that Biden gained. This 12 months, she misplaced to Democratic Consultant Ruben Gallego, a retired US Marine and a Latino, in a marketing campaign 12 months through which Latino voters have been pivotal inside the voters.
Specter, the professor, mentioned split-ticket voting “doesn’t present adequate proof that any malfeasance has occurred”.
Our ruling
Threads posts mentioned Musk’s Starlink know-how manipulated votes within the 2024 election to profit Trump.
Federal and state election officers rebutted claims of 2024 election fraud, together with claims that Starlink manipulated the vote counts.
Voting machines aren’t sometimes linked to the web and longstanding methods guarantee votes are pretty and precisely tabulated.
We discovered just one occasion – in California, not a swing state – of Starlink know-how getting used to help election infrastructure, similar to having the digital pollbooks linked to a county voter database.
We charge these claims Pants on Fireplace!
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird and PolitiFact North Carolina Author Paul Specht contributed to this report.