Elon Musk calls for eliminating EVMs ahead of US elections: 'Risk of hacking'

Billionaire businessman and Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, Elon Musk, called for eliminating Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) as he responded to a social media post on voting irregularities in the United States. He stated that the risk of EVMs being hacked is "still too high".

Earlier today, an independent candidate in the US presidential race, Robert F Kennedy Jr, alleged illegalities in a primary election.

He wrote, "Puerto Rico’s primary elections just experienced hundreds of voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines, according to the Associated Press. Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected. What happens in jurisdictions where there is no paper trail?"

Kennedy Jr who said that US citizens need to know whether every one of their votes were counted, also called for returning to paper ballots to ensure “honest and fair elections”.

Sharing the post, Musk said, “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high.”

On June 2, Puerto Rico held primary elections to select candidates for the New Progressive Party (PNP) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). However, both parties reported hundreds of ballots showing inaccurate results, with the PNP reporting over 700 errors and the PPD pointing to some 350 discrepancies.

Later, the Elections Commission conducted a full vote tally by auditing paper receipts from hundreds of ballot-counting machines.

The commission also said that it is reviewing its contract with an electronic voting company after the discrepancies were discovered.