Henrico County corrects Elon Musk after reposting false claim about voter turnout in 2020 election

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) -- Henrico County corrected Elon Musk on its X account on Monday after he shared a false claim about the county's voter turnout during the 2020 presidential election. On Sunday, Oct. 6, Elon Musk shared a post on X -- formerly known as Twitter -- claiming that there was widespread voter fraud in Henrico during the 2020 presidential election, which pitted then-president Donald Trump against current president Joe Biden. The post alleges that eight local precincts in Henrico -- Randolph, Spottswood, Monument Hills, Hunton, Rollingwood, Longdale, Elko and Derbyshire -- reported a higher than 100% voter turnout that year. The original poster said that these allegations were made by an "EXPERT" who estimates that "there were 15,572 fraudulent votes in Henrico alone" in 2020. Tuition program for military dependents expected to continue growing, potentially costing Virginia schools "Many election fraud deniers are here attempting to debunk this data by quoting the County's official precinct reporting data," the user wrote in a reply. "But as expected, they're clueless about elections. Henrico County and many others in Virginia do NOT include mail-in votes & early votes in their individual precinct results reporting, in fact, they deliberately do it to hide the obvious manipulation of mail-in ballots." Musk shared this post on his account -- which has over 200 million followers -- with the text "Is this accurate @CommunityNotes?" On the afternoon of Monday, Oct. 7, Henrico County's official X account shared Elon's post, stating that the claim is false. Across five total posts in a thread, the county made the following statement: "Hi, Elon. The assertion that some Henrico County precincts experienced 100% or greater turnout in the 2020 general election is incorrect. Here's a chart from the Henrico Voter Registration and Elections Office: https://t.co/hCVnE68pDe (2/5) In the 2020 election, Henrico saw a total voter turnout of 77.5% — out of 236,922 registered county voters, 183,760 cast ballots. 72,116 cast their ballots in person at their precinct on Election Day. Another 110,479 voted absentee (and 1,075 cast provisional ballots). (3/5) The 2020 election in Virginia allowed no-excuse, in-person absentee voting (early voting) for the first time. Those voters used generic ballots that didn't include precinct info. After the election, Virginia passed legislation requiring precinct info on absentee ballots. (4/5) For the 2020 general election, Henrico County’s absentee ballots were counted as a lump sum, and not by precinct, since it was not possible to identify the precincts on the absentee ballots. The same was true for all jurisdictions in Virginia. (5/5) So, total voter turnout at the precinct level — those who voted in person at their precinct on Election Day combined with early voters — can't be determined for the 2020 election. Only the number of in-person voters on Election Day could be counted at the precinct level." Henrico County Government (@HenricoNews) 21-year-old motorcyclist dead after hitting car on I-64 in Henrico Musk is open about his support for Trump. He recently attended one of Trump's rallies and delivered a speech.