He has railed against voting by mail as “insane,” claimed it was “not allowed” before the pandemic, and suggested it is a way to commit fraud.
But Elon Musk has repeatedly voted by mail—when he voted at all.
The billionaire Tesla and X boss became one of the most vocal opponents of mail-in ballots at the same time as he drifted rightward from what he claimed was a “100 per cent Democratic” voting record.
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But now the California Secretary of State’s office has released records of how he voted after a long-running battle by NBC News to obtain them—and they show that Musk barely voted after becoming a U.S. citizen in 2002, and that when he did, he did it by mail.
The records provide almost two decades of insight into the patchy voting habits of one of the world’s wealthiest men, although not who he voted for: Every American voter is entitled to secrecy at the ballot box.
Musk’s voter file shows that he registered to vote in August 2006, four years after taking the oath as an American citizen—he was born in South Africa to a Canadian mother and South African father, entitling him to passports from both countries—but never exercised his democratic rights until the general election in 2016, when he voted by mail. He voted again by mail in the 2018 midterms. In 2020 he canceled his California voting registration and re-registered in Texas, which would have allowed him to vote in that year’s general election.
In January this year, he claimed on X that his voting record was “100 per cent Democratic,” which would suggest that, if true, he had voted for Hillary Clinton and then for Joe Biden.
But the California voting file shows that he skipped opportunities to vote for Democrats including, among others, former President Barack Obama; current Vice President Kamala Harris when she twice ran for California attorney general; former California Gov. Jerry Brown; and multiple members of the House and California state legislature.
California has long allowed voting by mail. In 2016, 58 percent of voters did the same as Musk, and in 2018, he was among the 65 percent of Californians returning their ballot through the mail or at drop boxes.
This is the record that shows when Elon Musk voted in California and how: twice, each time by mail, first in 2016 and then in 2018.
Office of the Secretary of State of CaliforniaBut in recent years, Musk has railed against the practice along similar lines to former President Donald Trump, amplifying claims of widespread fraud that have never been proven in court.
Musk repeated his claims in an email to NBC News, writing, “voting by mail has been recognized as an invitation to fraud throughout the world,” but not addressing why he had used it in the past.
His move to Texas may not have made Musk much more inclined to participate in democracy. The Daily Beast revealed in 2022 that Musk had failed to vote in that year’s midterms after telling his followers, “I recommend voting for a Republican Congress,” and also tweeting that there would be a “red wave.” That prediction turned out to be vastly over-optimistic: The GOP took the House by a wafer-thin margin and then faced chaos as it feuded over California Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s ultimately successful bid to be speaker.
