Space X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday reiterated that electronic voting machines and postal voting is “too risky” and should be replaced with paper ballots and in-person voting.
Musk’s remarks come four months before the US presidential elections. Taking to X, the businessman shared news reports emphasising the unreliability of voting machines ranging from the use of outdated versions of the Microsoft operating system and decade-old voting machines to testimonies at the June 2017 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, where it was alleged that the machines could be reprogrammed through a “vote-stealing code” to “invisibly cause any candidate to win.”
Sharing four news clippings. Musk wrote: “Electronic voting machines and anything mailed in is too risky. We should mandate paper ballots and in-person voting only.”
(X@elonmusk)
This is not the first time that Musk has weighed in on the issue. Musk’s original post, dated June 16, was in response to Robert Kennedy, an independent Presidential candidate in the US, who claimed that Puerto Rico’s primary elections experienced hundreds of voting irregularities related to EVMs.
“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk had posted.
Musk’s remarks had drawn a sharp reaction from BJP leader and former minister of state for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar who called his assertion a “sweeping generalisation” as the credibility of EVMs remains a hot button issue in India, with the Opposition accusing the ruling BJP-led NDA of using the machines to manipulate election results.
“Elon Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet-connected voting machines. Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right, as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” Chandrasekhar had said.
Musk responded: “Anything can be hacked.”
Chandrasekhar then posted: “Technically ur right – anything is possible E.g..wth quantum compute, i can decrypt any level of encryption, with lab level tech n plenty of resources, i can hack any digital hardware/system incldng flight controls of a glass cockpit of a jet etc etc. But thats a different type of a conversatn from EVMs being secure n reliable vis a vis paper voting. And we can agree to disagree.”
The former minister had told The Indian Express that Musk was “getting into the realm of theory,” and was “conflating” EVM devices which are connected to a network compared to those used in India which are “air gapped, and isolated boxes that are simply electronic counting machines”.
“These sweeping statements that are sometimes made by these tech titans don’t go into the granularity of understanding what they are commenting on. They do not know the specific hardware design and architecture. In that context, Musk’s tweet was not correct,” he said.
