Here’s a timeless dictum that aptly applies to election administration: Everything looks suspicious when you don’t know how anything works. Electi

I ran Twitter’s civic integrity team. Elon Musk has no idea how elections work.

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2024-10-20 21:30:19

Here’s a timeless dictum that aptly applies to election administration: Everything looks suspicious when you don’t know how anything works.

Elections are a complex mix of diverse laws, procedures, technology and exhaustive manual cross-checks. Contrary to what many believe, elections officials do not blindly accept the numbers that come out of voting machines, nor do they count the mail ballots that are delivered to elections offices without validating them first. Free and fair elections rely on a multilayered system of processes based on human due diligence and automated technological tools. Unfortunately, this complexity takes longer to explain than simplistic conspiracy theories. And with less than 20 days remaining before Election Day, we are seeing a marked uptick in the number of wrongheaded claims about how elections are run.

I’m not optimistic that Musk has the self-control to avoid poking the bear with the possibility of more defamation lawsuits.