Arizona election official politely eviscerates Elon Musk's illegal voter tweet
It seems at times as if Elon Musk purchased Twitter (now X) just so he could spread conspiracy theories in a completely unimpeded manner to his 180 million followers.
Because he does.
He says he does this because some of these theories “have turned out to be true.”
Have you ever heard the old saying about someone being all brains and no common sense?
Yeah, that.
Musk spreads conspiracies because he can
You’d think — hope, at least — that a person with 180 million followers would only share information that he knows to be true. But, no.
Or, as Elon himself has put it, “I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.”
And so he has helped to spread some truly awful notions, including the ugly “great replacement theory,” the dark lie that Jews and “leftists” want to replace the white population with non-white immigrants.
The White House (and many others) condemned Musk for what it called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”
Some of X’s big advertisers paused their accounts after that. It didn’t seem to bother Musk one bit.
And he goes on. Because … he can.
The lastest involves Arizona voter registration
Recently, Musk reposted an unsubstantiated (and totally incorrect) post suggesting that 220,731 illegal immigrants had registered to vote in Arizona.
Musk’s comment was, “Extremely concerning.”
Actually, what’s extremely concerning is that a person with his clout and his resources would repost such a thing to 180 million X followers without checking its veracity.
After all, Musk could afford to pay a staff of researchers dedicated to checking out each and every wacky conspiracy he finds interesting. And then deciding whether to post about them or not.
In this case, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, an extremely fastidious, extremely polite public servant eviscerated the claim Musk reposted in an oh-so-polite manner.
Richer pointed out, for example, that “only 39,653 new voters have registered in Maricopa County in 2024 in total. For Arizona, that number is about 60,000.”
Science can't fix Musk's damaging tweets
He noted that “in Arizona, since October 1, 1996, drivers have had to provide proof of citizenship for driver's licenses (except Type F). We use this data to confirm citizenship for the vast majority of registration applicants. We also have some other tools at our disposal, or we communicate directly with the voter to get documentation.
“If the voter cannot provide documented proof of citizenship, but still attests under penalty of law that he is a citizen, he goes on what is called the ‘Federal Only’ list in Arizona.”
Of which there are about 30,000 in all of Arizona.
Richer ends with “there is 0 validity to the suggestion in the original post that 220,731 illegal immigrants have registered in Arizona in 2024. Hope this helps. We loved the recent rocket launch that we could see in the Arizona sky. Thanks for all the cool sciencey stuff you continue to do.”
Yeah, sure, but does the sciencey stuff make up for even one of his tweets?
Reach Montini at [email protected].
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Elon Musk's Arizona voter conspiracy gets a polite smackdown