Actor warns voting systems are ‘vulnerable’ — tells Democrats to watch out for ‘ELON’

BS BULLETIN:

Actor Mark Ruffalo warned Democrats to watch for possible voting-system manipulation ahead of the midterms.
Ruffalo specifically invoked Elon Musk while discussing election cybersecurity, saying, “We need to be on guard for what we may not see coming — ELON.”
Election systems can have cybersecurity vulnerabilities, but Ruffalo presented no evidence that Musk is planning or capable of manipulating the 2026 vote.

Mark Ruffalo is worried about the security of America’s voting systems ahead of the midterms — and he has a very famous billionaire on his mind.

The “Avengers” actor warned Democrats about possible manipulation of voting technology, specifically raising Elon Musk while discussing election cybersecurity.

“We need to be on guard for what we may not see coming — ELON,” Ruffalo said.

“That’s the cybersecurity of these elections,” he continued. “We know that these systems are vulnerable.”

Ruffalo did not present evidence that Musk is involved in a plan to manipulate voting machines.

Musk apparently found the accusation amusing, responding to a clip of Ruffalo’s remarks with laughing emojis.

The exchange comes as election security has once again become a major issue heading into the November midterms.

There is an important distinction between saying voting technology can contain vulnerabilities and claiming that someone is actually exploiting those vulnerabilities to change an election.

Computer-security researchers have demonstrated vulnerabilities in voting equipment under certain circumstances. Election officials use multiple safeguards against attacks, including restricted physical access, chain-of-custody procedures, testing, audits and, in many jurisdictions, voter-verifiable paper records.

Experts cited in recent fact-checking have said that vulnerabilities are real but that there is no evidence those vulnerabilities have been successfully used to manipulate the outcome of a U.S. election.

Ruffalo’s comments are especially striking because allegations involving voting machines have spent years at the center of America’s election-integrity wars.

Musk himself has previously expressed distrust of electronic voting machines. During the 2024 campaign, he argued that computer programs could be hacked and advocated paper ballots counted by hand.

Now Ruffalo is raising essentially the opposite political nightmare: that someone associated with Trump could potentially exploit election technology against Democrats.

MY QUICK TAKE

Well, this is an interesting turn in America’s long-running election-security debate.

For years, the country has been told that merely discovering a theoretical vulnerability is not evidence that somebody actually stole an election. That distinction shouldn’t suddenly disappear because Mark Ruffalo has spotted Elon Musk standing on the other side of the political fence.

And there’s an irony here worth remembering: Elon Musk himself spent the 2024 campaign saying he didn’t trust voting machines because computers can be hacked.

So now we have Musk suspicious of the machines, Ruffalo suspicious of Musk around the machines, and somewhere an old-fashioned paper ballot is quietly wondering when everybody is going to apologize to it.