- Elon Musk slammed New York City’s mayoral ballot as a “scam,” claiming no ID required, duplicate candidates, and Cuomo’s placement.
- Experts and users quickly debunked Musk: fusion voting explains duplicates, ballot order is by lottery, and ID safeguards exist.
- His accusations echo past election skepticism, risking public trust amid a high-stakes, closely watched mayoral race.
New York, NY — November 4, 2025 — As polls opened across New York City for a high-stakes mayoral race that could usher in the city’s first Muslim mayor, billionaire Elon Musk unleashed a barrage of accusations on his social media platform, labeling the local ballot a “scam” and fueling fresh doubts about election integrity.
The outburst, which reached his nearly 229 million followers just hours into voting, echoed familiar rhetoric from the 2024 presidential campaign and drew swift pushback from experts, voters, and even fellow X users who called it a textbook case of misinformation.
Musk’s post came with a photo of the ballot and three pointed complaints: “The New York City ballot form is a scam! – No ID is required – Other mayoral candidates appear twice – Cuomo’s name is last in bottom right.”
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The timing couldn’t have been more charged. Today’s vote pits Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Queens assemblyman and frontrunner, against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s running as an independent after a bruising primary loss, and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
A Mamdani win would mark a seismic shift for the nation’s largest city, amplifying progressive voices amid national debates over immigration, housing costs, and federal overreach under President Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump Shows Support for Independent Runner
The race has already been a lightning rod, with Trump himself wading in over the weekend. In a Sunday 60 Minutes interview, the president endorsed Cuomo, calling him a bulwark against “radical” change.
By Monday, Trump had escalated on Truth Social, branding Mamdani a “communist” and “proven and self-professed JEW HATER” — claims without evidence — while threatening to slash federal funding to New York if the Democrat prevailed.
“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home,” Trump wrote, adding that a Mamdani victory would doom the city to “ZERO chance of success, or even survival!”
Musk, a vocal Trump ally and co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), piled on the day before with his own pinned post: “Remember to vote tomorrow in New York! Bear in mind that a vote for Curtis is really a vote for Mumdumi or whatever his name is.
VOTE CUOMO!” The apparent misspelling of Mamdani’s name only amplified the derision, but it was today’s “scam” allegation that set off alarms.
Critics saw it as preemptive groundwork to question a potential Mamdani upset, much like Trump’s 2020 claims of a “rigged” election.
The backlash was immediate and pointed.
Elon Gets Heat on Social Media
Adam Cochran, a professor and policy analyst, fired back on X: “Elon is truly the dumbest smart person ever.” He broke it down methodically: Voter ID isn’t required in New York because eligibility is cross-checked against state rolls at registration and polling sites.
Candidates like Mamdani and Sliwa appear twice because they secured cross-endorsements — Mamdani from Democrats and the Working Families Party, Sliwa from Republicans and the Protect Animals line — a standard “fusion voting” practice that’s been legal since the 19th century.
As for Cuomo’s bottom-right spot? It’s random, determined by lottery under New York State Election Law §7-116, which prioritizes major parties before independents.
A Cuomo spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the placement was drawn at random, not rigged. Other users echoed the corrections. “God damn he’s either stupid or ignorant….both Mamdani and Sliwa are on the ballot twice because they were each nominated by 2 parties….open your eyes and read the ballot….it’s not rocket science!” tweeted @WUTangKids, attaching a screenshot of the ballot for emphasis.
@TheRabbitHole84, quoting Musk’s earlier gripe about citizenship proof, added fuel: “Americans want proof of citizenship for voter registration.”
But even there, fact-checkers noted New York’s safeguards, like signature matching and address verification, make widespread fraud vanishingly rare.
This isn’t Musk’s first brush with election skepticism. Just last month, he amplified claims of “vastly greater” illegal voting by non-citizens, tweeting, “Consider that California and New York banned the use of ID for voting! They legalized fraudulent voting.”
That post, viewed millions of times, tied into broader DOGE efforts to purge outdated records — like removing 12 million entries of people over 120 from Social Security databases in May, which Musk hailed as a “major reduction in fraud.” Yet studies from the Brennan Center for Justice consistently show non-citizen voting occurs in fewer than 0.0001% of cases, often due to honest errors rather than malice.
Musk’s history runs deeper. In February, a Musk-backed group, the Fair Election Fund, offered a $5 million bounty for proof of 2024 voter fraud but turned up nothing substantial, instead pivoting to gripes over third-party ballot access, according to The Guardian.
Earlier, in August 2024, he faced a fraud lawsuit over a $1 million sweepstakes tied to a pro-Trump petition, with a federal judge ruling he must answer allegations of misleading voters. And who could forget his October 2024 town hall push of debunked Dominion Voting Systems conspiracies, which the company slammed as “verifiable facts” contradicted by audits and hand counts?
Mamdani Says He Won’t Be Intimidated
Today’s drama unfolds against a backdrop of off-year elections beyond New York. Voters in Virginia and New Jersey are choosing governors, while Californians decide on a redrawn Congressional map — all seen as early tests for Trump’s agenda and Democrats’ post-2024 rebound.
Turnout in New York is already surging: Nearly 460,000 ballots cast by noon, per the city Board of Elections, topping the entire 2021 mayoral race. Mamdani, undeterred, told The Guardian he won’t be “intimidated” by the attacks, drawing parallels to the Islamophobic smears faced by London’s Sadiq Khan in 2016.
“The similarities… are uncanny,” a source close to Mamdani said. Cuomo, meanwhile, has leaned into the controversy, campaigning in Washington Heights on Monday and framing himself as the steady hand New York needs. As results trickle in after polls close at 9 p.m., Musk’s words hang heavy.
Election officials from both parties stress that New York’s system — paper ballots, bipartisan observers, post-election audits — is built to withstand scrutiny.
But in an era where one tweet can sway perceptions, the “scam” label risks eroding trust just when it’s needed most. For now, New Yorkers are voting, and the city that never sleeps is wide awake to the noise.
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