An advice against using electronic voting machines (EVMs) by Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk sparked an exchange of posts between him and former Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on microblogging platform X, formerly Twitter, after the latter gave a counter to the multi-billionaire.
It all started with Elon Musk’s post where he cited concerns about EVMs’ potential vulnerabilities to hacking, saying that we should “eliminate” the voting system. Musk’s post got a reply from former Union minister Rajeev Chandresekhar, who offered a ‘tutorial’ on EVMs.
Musk’s remark was a response to an X post by, Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of former US President John F Kennedy and an independent hopeful for the 2024 US Elections.
Robert F Kennedy Jr 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?”
Reposting this, Musk wrote: “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high.”
Concerns over EVMs have not just been raised in the United States, but also in India where Opposition parties have alleged EVM tampering several times.
