Some social media users say they have found an explanation for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 election defeat. They say billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink technology manipulated votes to benefit President-elect Donald Trump.

Starlink is an internet provider that uses satellites to provide connectivity; it is a subsidiary of Musk’s commercial spaceflight company, SpaceX.

“Musk’s Starlink put votes online in swing states,” he said. The November 10 message said:. “Swing State voters voted against Democrats but Trump on top? Unlikely. Starlink satellites explode, destroying evidence.”

Starlink has been making headlines in recent weeks when the company distributed equipment to help people regain internet access in areas affected by the hurricane. For some, this decision was further proof of the conspiracy.

“The Russians have access to Starlink terminals and therefore to satellites. The Russians are known hackers,” said another. Article from November 10. “Elon Musk and the US government have sent Starlink terminals to Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia due to the hurricanes.”

Other Discussion users summarized the unsubstantiated claims: “People say Elon Musk used Starlink to steal the US election for Donald Trump.”

(Screenshots from chats)

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation on its feed. (Learn more about our partnership with Metawhich owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Election security experts and state and local election officials have refuted the claims, saying the 2024 presidential election is secure and there is no evidence of fraud linked to Starlink.

“Starlink is suspected by conspiracy theorists not because of what it does, but because Elon Musk owns it,” said journalist, author and conspiracy theorist Mike Rothschild. expert.

This conspiracy theory has been circulating on Threads in the middle a bigger wave allegations of election denialism from liberals that mimic false Republican claims of 2020 election fraud.

“Conspiracy theories about the theft of lost elections are a natural way to deal with an unexpected outcome,” Rothschild said, adding that it is important to “leave the conspiracy behind and accept reality.”

Election infrastructure is secure

Jen Easterly, director of the Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, reported As of Nov. 6, the agency had “no evidence of any malicious activity that materially impacts the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”

Officials in swing states that received Starlink technology after the September and October hurricanes also said Starlink technology could not have been used to benefit Trump.

North Carolina’s tabulators and ballot-marking devices are never connected to the Internet, said Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Connecting such equipment to the Internet is prohibited by state lawhe said.

“Satellite internet devices were not used to tabulate or download vote counts in North Carolina,” Gannon said. “Additionally, our compiled results are encrypted from source to destination, preventing results from being altered in transit. We have no evidence of any tampering with votes by anyone.”

The other six swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania And Wisconsin — have similar election security protocols to ensure that voting equipment is never connected to the Internet while ballots are being counted.

Even if Starlink had been used in some way to change the vote count, there are systems designed to detect discrepancies in the tabulations, including risk-limiting audits, canvassing, and certification of vote results. elections, said Michael Specter, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech University who specializes in election security. .

“None of these are foolproof, but each makes a successful attack significantly less likely,” Specter said.

Generally speaking, voting machines are not connected to the Internet, experts say. In some states, ballot tabulators are briefly connected to the Internet to transmit results when polls close. And in many places, other election infrastructure, such as voter registries containing digital voter registration lists, have internet connectivity.

We found little evidence that Starlink is widely used in elections. Even in Asheville, North Carolina’s Buncombe County, one of the places hardest hit by Hurricane Helene, election officials told PolitiFact that Starlink was not used for any election functions.

Genya Coulter, senior election analyst at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit focused on accurate, secure and transparent elections, said she knows Starlink technology has been used to support election infrastructure in one place : Tulare County, California. Asset won Tulare County with about 60% of the vote.

“Most rural areas of the county have little or no broadband access, and Starlink was used to connect electronic voting records to the county voter database,” Coulter said. Poll books are lists of digital voter registration records.

The vote tabulators were not connected to Starlink satellite internet, she said, adding that the county had about 28,000 in-person voters.

Regarding allegations that Russian hackers influenced the election results, Coulter said she was “less concerned about Russian hackers affecting vote totals and significantly more concerned” about the deluge of information incorrect elections which Russia-linked groups distributed online ahead of elections and bomb threats targeting election infrastructure that the civil servants declared that they were of “Russian origin”.

What about reports of a Starlink satellite fireball?

On November 10, a Starlink satellite re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere heading southeast from Washington to Texas and exploded.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and head of the Science Data Systems Group at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center, said there was nothing remarkable about it.

“It’s not a matter of suddenly deciding to retire this satellite in the last week,” McDowell said. “Such re-entries have been happening almost daily for the past few years, they just happen at random times and places around the world, so rarely in the United States at night, where Americans can see them.”

According to U.S. Space Force data, SpaceX decommissioned this satellite on Aug. 2, when the satellite began lowering its orbit, McDowell said. SpaceX abandoned the satellite on Oct. 13, McDowell said.

Stargazers in the Southwestern United States reported seeing fireballs early in the morning of November 10. McDowell said that’s normal: During satellite reentry and breakup, observers can sometimes see fireballs moving slowly across the sky.

Why Democrats Won the Senate Elections While Trump Won the Presidency

Some of the posts that started the Starlink conspiracy theory pointed to Democratic successes in some down-and-out races as evidence that something was wrong with the Trump-Harris results. Although there is a strong correlation between votes cast for president and senator, it is not foolproof. Voters are free to choose candidates from different parties for different offices, and a fraction of voters do.

Ticket splitting — when voters choose a Democrat for one office and a Republican for another — has become less common in recent election cycles as political polarization has increased. But this practice has not completely disappeared.

Mandate can help candidates get re-elected. For example, two swing states saw Democratic incumbents retain their Senate seats: Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Jacky Rosen in Nevada. Their accomplishments in office and voter familiarity could have helped these candidates.

Controversy, or lack thereof, can also affect candidates’ campaigns. In Arizona, for example, Republican Kari Lake gained voters’ attention in 2022 when she lost a gubernatorial race based largely on allegations that elections were fraudulent, including the presidential race of 2020 won by Biden. This year, she lost to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a retired U.S. Marine and Latino, during a campaign year in which Latino voters played a central role in the electorate.

Specter said the split vote “does not provide sufficient evidence that malfeasance occurred.”

Our decision

The Threads articles said Musk’s Starlink technology manipulated votes in the 2024 election to benefit Trump.

Federal and state election officials have refuted claims of 2024 election fraud, including claims that Starlink manipulated vote counts.

Voting machines are generally not connected to the Internet, and existing systems ensure that votes are tabulated fairly and accurately.

We found only one instance — in California, not a swing state — where Starlink technology was used to support election infrastructure, such as connecting electronic voting records to a county election database .

We rate these Pants on Fire claims!

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird and North Carolina writer Paul Specht contributed to this report.

RELATED: No, it is not suspicious that Democrats won the Senate elections in states won by Donald Trump.

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