Elon Musk Reignites EVM Row: ‘Don’t Trust Computers’

 New Delhi: He may be the founder and CEO of globally-used social media platform X as well as Tesla, but Elon Musk doesn’t trust computers – at least for the purpose of voting.

He reiterated his view that he prefers paper ballots over machines (EVMs) in the upcoming US Presidential election.

“My view: paper ballots, hand counted. I know a lot about computers, won’t trust them,” Musk said during a rally with Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Musk, who is one of the mega donors for the Trump campaign, has also held a solo rally to convince voters to choose the former President, and not Kamala Harris.

Explaining why he doesn’t want electronic voting machines (EVMs) not to be used in elections, the billionaire said: “I am a technologist, I know a lot about computers. The last thing I will do is trust a computer programme. It is just too easy to hack, too easy to add just one line (of code); and it is difficult to hack paper ballots.”

In June, Musk had got into a war of words with India’s then Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar over the reliability and security of EVMs, which are used in our country for all major polls.

In a post on X, Musk had raised concerns about EVMs, advocating they should be eliminated due to potential risk of being hacked by humans or AI, even if the risk is minimal.

His comments were backed by Rahul Gandhi, in line with whose Congress’ well-known stand against EVMs which they characterise as a ‘black box.’

However, BJP leader Chandrasekhar stated that labelled Musk’s comments were a “huge sweeping generalisation” without basis. He offered to give Musk a tutorial to demonstrate the robustness of EVMs designed in India.

“Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial Elon,” Chandrasekhar had said.

Musk replied, “Anything can be hacked.”

Chandrasekhar claimed that Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media.

“No connectivity, no Bluetooth. Wifi. Internet, that is there is no way in. Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” Chandrasekhar had argued on Musk’s X.

Musk’s apprehensions stem from the fact that voting fraud is a contentious issue in the US, with regular computer platforms being used to build internet-connected voting machines.