How Starlink Stole the Election and Other Fanciful Election-Denying Claims

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One of the most popular election-rigging theories on the right in 2020 was the “Italygate” theory that posited Italian military satellites “interfered” with American voting machines, switching votes from Trump to Biden.

Some in government took the theory seriously enough to investigate. Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller called U.S. officials in Rome to ask about it. The White House also asked Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to look into it.

Some on the left ridiculed the notion that Italian satellites would be able to hack American voting machines. I wonder what they’re saying today about the fantastical election-denying theory that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service was used to “tabulate” votes in swing states. “Swing states were able to use Starlink in order to tally up and to count ballot votes, or voting ballots, in their state,” claimed TikTok user Etheria77 in a video.

Starlink terminals are unable to “tabulate” anything, but the video has gotten almost 5 million views and remarkably, even mainstream news outlets have felt the need to debunk the theory.

Starlink terminals “were used by election officials in some states to improve internet connectivity at rural polling locations,” writes Alex Demas at The Bulwark. “Starlink is not a tabulation system and was not used to count or transmit votes in the swing states.”

Of course, it wasn’t. But the Starlink theory is only one of several conspiracy theories that are being promoted by the left.

Left-wing pundits claim that the Starlink theory is being promoted by “fringe” leftists. That’s OK; mainstream Democrats have been promoting conspiracy theories about Russia and Trump for a decade and have yet to disavow their idiotic conclusions.

What makes the Starlink conspiracy theory so ludicrous is that most voting machines are not connected to the internet. The Associated Press wrote in October, “There are some jurisdictions in a few states that allow for ballot scanners in polling locations to transmit unofficial results, using a mobile private network, after voting has ended on Election Day and the memory cards containing the vote tallies have been removed.”

NBC News:

Max Read, a senior research manager for elections at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank studying extremism, hate and disinformation, said the post-election denialism popping up on the left is “the most significant” effort to dispute or undermine elections he has observed from that side of the aisle.

“We see limited engagement on these types of things from liberal spaces or left-leaning actors online,” Read told NBC News. “It’s a pretty insignificant level of discourse compared to the right.”

“People look for easy answers in times of crisis, and for those who view this election result as a crisis for themselves or just a shock, it’s somewhat natural to look for something to explain that away and to explain why your expectations weren’t met,” Read said. “And I think that’s consistent across the ideological spectrum, meeting a shock with searching and uncertainty about where to find answers and sometimes falling into and latching onto things that aren’t true but are easy explanations.”

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There are even wilder theories about Musk and Starlink.

In an episode of his podcast a week after the election, Joe Rogan told comedian Theo Von that Musk had “created an app” to see the election results hours in advance. Left-wing creators began to speculate how Musk was able to have pulled these results, building a baseless conspiracy theory that Starlink was used to manipulate vote tallies. One TikTok user made a video with 300,000 views citing a local news report that said one district in California used Starlink’s internet services at its polling site — the report said Starlink was used to connect poll workers’ laptops to the internet, not the voting machines. A majority of California voted for Harris. Another TikTok video cited Harris’ concession speech, in which she said, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars,” suggesting that she was referencing Starlink.

“Musk’s Starlink uploaded votes in swing states,” political commentator and former George Washington University adjunct professor Cheri Jacobus posted on Threads. “Swing state voters went Dem downballot but Trump at the top? [Unlikely].”

Max Read thinks that people who are on the losing end of a closely fought race tend to cast about desperately for answers and latch on the the easiest conspiracy theory even if it has no basis in fact. That describes 2024 Democrats and their belief in faeries and goblins stealing the election for Trump.