A Philly Republican election official called out Elon Musk for ballot-harvesting disinformation on X
“This is just one instance in a pattern of people trying to sow doubt and mistrust in our elections," said City Commissioner Seth Bluestein.
A Republican elections official in Philadelphia called out Elon Musk on Wednesday for spreading “disinformation” by retweeting a false claim that a Center City social services organization was involved in widespread ballot harvesting.
Late Tuesday evening, Musk — the SpaceX founder who has been using his wealth and influence to help former President Donald Trump win Pennsylvania in the fast-approaching election — retweeted a post stating that Broad Street Love has “5,200 voters” at its address and implied that the nongovernmental organization was involved in harvesting thousands of votes in 2020.
“Homeless Services NGOs harvested hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots from transients in 2020. This single-site NGO in Philly has thousands alone,” wrote the user @fentasyl, above a screen grab from Broad Street Love’s website describing how it provides a mailing address for unhoused people, which helps them obtain identification, search for jobs, receive benefits, establish permanent residency, and vote.
“No one knows who filled out those ballots,” the post stated, while providing no evidence that any ballot was filled out by anyone other than the registered voter.
Musk, who also owns X, then tweeted that to his 202 million followers and wrote: “This is crazy.”
It’s also not true, according to City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican member of the three-person board responsible for election operations and voter registration in Philadelphia.
“Hi, @elonmusk,” Bluestein wrote on X on Wednesday. “The post you shared is spreading disinformation. 1. There are not 5,200 people registered to vote from that address. 2. In the 2020 General fewer than 150 ballots were mailed to that address, most of which were not returned.”
Bluestein told The Inquirer on Wednesday that about 2,200 people are registered to vote at the organization’s Broad Street address.
“That includes a lot of people who are homeless who receive mail and services at Broad Street Love, and they are entitled to be registered there,” Bluestein said.
He said voting data from 2020 show that fewer than 150 ballots were mailed to Broad Street Love, “and many of those weren’t even returned.”
Regarding the ballot-harvesting claim promoted by Musk, “it’s just simply not true,” Bluestein said. “This is just one instance in a pattern of people trying to sow doubt and mistrust in our elections. They are taking bad information and purposely spreading it to cause a lack of faith in our elections.”
Laure Biron, president and CEO of Broad Street Love, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that her organization serves as the mailing address for more than 5,200 people. In addition to voting, that program helps people obtain identity documents and birth certificates and access Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits.
“To be abundantly clear, we have not — and will never — fill out ballots on behalf of our guests, nor will we ever tell any guest who they should vote for,” Biron said. “We are confident that our Mail Service and all related activity are 100% in compliance with Pennsylvania election law.”
Broad Street Love is one of several homeless shelters and nonprofits that Philadelphians experiencing housing insecurity use as their address when registering to vote.
“We are proud that through this process we enable our guests to create pathways for stability,” Biron said, “while also ensuring that those who wish to exercise their right to vote have an avenue to do so.”
Musk has set up a Pittsburgh “war room” to help Trump carry Pennsylvania, and he has been campaigning for the former president in the key swing state. As part of a voter mobilization effort, he’s also awarding a daily $1 million prize to people who sign his pro-Trump America PAC petition. They are randomly selected. The sweepstakes has drawn denunciation from election law experts — and the U.S. Justice Department has warned Musk’s super PAC that the giveaway may violate the law, CNN reported Wednesday.
» READ MORE: Elon Musk’s $1 million giveaway to battleground state voters could be illegal, election law experts say
At a town hall in Delaware County last week, Musk implied, without evidence, that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is a “puppet” being controlled by associates of the late Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
Musk has also been tied to a dark money group that has produced a fake manifesto aimed at confusing voters about Harris’ positions. The document, called Progress 2028, is purported to be Harris’ version of Project 2025, the largely unpopular Heritage Foundation conservative policy guide for a second Trump term.