New Starlink Election Fraud Claims: A Deeper Look and a Fact Check
Fact Checking a New Round of Claims
In recent days, I’ve been getting DMs from readers asking about new posts circulating on Substack and social media that claim Kamala Harris actually won the 2024 election—and that this time, there’s proof. The new theory that secret updates were made to voting machines right before the election; that Elon Musk’s Starlink network was used to manipulate results in real time; and that Harris votes vanished from precincts where she should have performed strongly.
This is essentially a continuation —with new evidence—of the post election claims, most notably by technologist Stephen Spoonamore, which pursued ideas including “bullet ballots,” vote erasure algorithms, and server-side manipulation. Those earlier claims made waves but eventually stalled—mainly because the technical documentation never materialized, and (some argued), the theories lacked internal consistency.
This new wave claims to solve that problem.
So … it got my attention. I went in with an open mind. I read the posts. I checked the court filings. I pulled vote data. I read everything I could find from both believers and skeptics. Here’s my report.
The Claims – What’s New This Time?
The centerpiece of the new theory is recounted thoroughly in a June 11 Substack post titled "She Won. They Didn’t Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election." Unlike earlier post-election theories, this one doesn’t just focus on theoretical vulnerabilities plus suspicions or vague statistical anomalies. It introduces what it claims is a complete mechanism consisting of software manipulation; a new access mechanism; and a test case.
New Technical Documentation: It describes engineering change orders (ECOs) showing that Pro V&V, a federally accredited test lab, approved software and hardware changes to ES&S voting machines just before the election, without triggering a full certification review. It did so, according to the new claim, by declaring the changes to be “de minimis” (inconsequential) which allowed the changes to be implemented without a complex recertification process. This “de minimis” claim is presented as essentially bogus — a cover to create an ability to make substantive changes without subjecting them to review.
A New Starlink Access Pathway: It claims that Elon Musk’s Starlink gained a new, previously unknown access that provided real-time internet connectivity to voting machines, allowing votes to be altered during tabulation.
‘A “Smoking Gun” Test Case: It cites five machines in Rockland County, NY, that recorded zero votes for Kamala Harris while showing hundreds of votes for other Democrats in the same precincts.
These claims suggest a full system: motive, method, and result. According to the post, this wasn’t just dirty politics or local fraud. It was a coordinated digital operation—technically sophisticated, nationally scaled, and hidden in plain sight.
The Evidence Presented
1. The Software Updates
The claimants point to engineering change orders (ECOs) filed by Pro V&V, an election vendor, in the months leading up to the election. These documents show:
Updates to ES&S machines involving printer models, ballot bin configurations, and file path structures.
These updates were categorized as “de minimis”—meaning minor enough not to require full re-certification or public disclosure.
The article argues that this classification allowed potentially significant system changes to escape scrutiny. It presents the “de minimis” categorization as done intentionally to shield the changes from the kind of scrutiny a re-certification would have carried out — and it suggests this was done knowingly, as a dodge to make it possible to introduce manipulations into the vote-counting software that went unnoticed because no recertification took place.
2. The Starlink Access Layer
The post introduces a new mechanism for real-time interference: It claims that days before the elction, this happened:
Just days before the election, Musk activated 265 brand new low Earth orbit (LEO) V2 Mini satellites, each equipped with Direct-to-Cell (DTC) technology capable of processing, routing, and manipulating real-time data, including voting data, through his satellite network.
DTC doesn’t require routers, towers, or a traditional SIM. It connects directly from satellite to any compatible device—including embedded modems in “air-gapped” voting systems, smart UPS units, or unsecured auxiliary hardware.
From that moment on:
- Commands could be sent from orbit
- Patch delivery became invisible to domestic monitors
- Compromised devices could be triggered remotely
So — the claim is that this enabled Starlink internet connections to be used to provide covert access to tabulation systems, especially in rural swing-state counties. The theory holds that voting tabulators were networked via Starlink during or just before vote processing, allowing for dynamic vote alteration from a central command.
3. Harris Vote Drop-Off in Rockland County
The article zeroes in on Rockland County, NY—particularly five machines in the town of Ramapo. It claims:
One machine (District 35) recorded 552 votes for Trump and 0 for Harris, yet showed 331 votes for Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in the same batch.
In multiple districts, voters reportedly signed affidavits saying they voted for Harris, but those votes never appeared in local tallies.
The court has ordered a hand recount and initiated a discovery process—something the article presents as a major turning point.
Evaluating the Evidence Critically
The Software Updates Happened
Yes—Pro V&V did make changes and did so without recertification, filing them as “de minimis.” These were documented and legally filed with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). According to Pro V&V, they included: replacing printers, reorganizing file storage locations, and addingmounting brackets and ballot bin modifications.
These changes were claimed to be “de minimis” by the Pro V&V, and the claimed changes were reviewed under federal protocols. According to Jack Cobb, director of Pro V&V, none of the changes affected tabulation logic. No update modified vote counting software or ballot interpretation algorithms. Unless Cobb blatantly lied not just verbally but in the data presented to the monitors (and no evidence of that has surfaced), these changes fall well within legal and technical norms for “de minimis” and were, in fact, de minimis. They did not touch on vote tabulation. So, based on the evidence, it seems that the claim that Cobb in essence falsified substantive changes as de minimis is not supported by the available evidence.
The Starlink Claim
The claim is that Starlink launched 265 new satellites days before the election that were “direct to cell” and thus had a back door into the voter tabulation machines. The claim is that once the Direct to Cell new satellites were up and functioning, Starlink had a back door into vote tabulation machines.
But:
According to all of the evidence I could find, Starlink was used only for interfacing with electronic poll books—the books used to check on voter registration status, not vote tabulation machines, which are different and were never connected to the internet. To be very clear, according to state and federal election officials, no vote tabulation systems were connected to the internet, Starlink or otherwise, at any point in the voting process.
Tabulators are “air-gapped”—physically disconnected from any network during operation.
No forensic audit, network trace, or post-election review has ever found evidence of Starlink being used to manipulate vote counts.
The claim feels intuitively powerful because Starlink is new, decentralized, and fast—and of couse, it’s controlled by Elon Musk. But none of the technical facts I could find support the idea that it was ever connected to vote-counting machines.
The Harris Vote Drop-Off in Ramapo
This was the most attention-grabbing claim.
The five machines in question are located in the villages of Monsey and Kaser, in the town of Ramapo.
These areas are overwhelmingly populated by Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities, which practice bloc voting under the guidance of rabbinic leadership. The rabbi’s say “vote for ____” and the community votes for ____. In this case - Trump.
In presidential elections, these communities have repeatedly supported Republican Presidential candidates—while simultaneously voting for Democrats in local or statewide races that impact schools, zoning, and housing.
This may (and probably does) explain the zero votes on these machines. Indeed — and this was quite comopelling — the same machine that recorded 0 votes for Kamala Harris in 2024 also recorded 0 votes for Joe Biden in 2020.
That’s not a theory—that’s confirmed by machine-level public records from the Rockland County Board of Elections.
The behavior looks strange and it is a bit strange. But it reflects a consistent, well-documented political pattern. And while the court did order a hand recount in response to the concerns, no ballots have gone missing and no irregularities in machine performance have been confirmed. More importantly, even if there turned out to be such a problem in Rockland, there is no evidence connecting it to the theory outlined above, since the voting tabulation machines were never connected to the internet, and thus were not subject to the type of manipulation envisioned in the theory.
Tentative Conclusions
The voting machine changes were real, but the idea that Pro V&V scammed the system by claiming “de minimis” to cover up malicious changes does not seem to be supported.
The deployment of 265 Starlink satellites just before the election is confirmed, but there is no evidence any of them were ever connected to voting tabulators and it appears they played no role in vote counting.
The “zero vote” anomaly has a strong sociological explanation and a clear historical precedent- bloc voting by orthodox jewish communities acting on recommendation of their rabbi. It happened in 2020 with Joe Biden receiving zero votes as well.
That doesn’t mean every question has been answered. The Rockland County hand recount is still pending. If new forensic evidence emerges, it deserves scrutiny. But nothing presented so far appears to substantiate the claim that Kamala Harris won and that votes were stolen from her.
What the Fact-Checkers Say
After coming to the foregoing tentative conclusions (and only then, so as to avoid confirmation bias), I went to the various fact checkers:
Snopes: Starlink–vote manipulation claim = False
PolitiFact: No evidence of backdoor access or tabulation interference
FactCheck.org: Broad theory = Baseless
AP, Wired, Al Jazeera: Confirm no known irregularities in system architecture or vote reporting
These organizations consulted election officials, cybersecurity analysts, and the voting machine manufacturers themselves. Their results reinforce what I found.
Final Thoughts
I understand why people want this to be true. I would have “wanted it to be true” if I let myself think that way but investigative disciplline required that I keep those thoughts at bay. I followed the evidence trail as best I could, looking for evidence that would really support the claims. I just couldn’t find it.
Anyway like I said at the outset — if someone out there can refute what I found out, or think I found out — or can clarify or ask further questions — I’m open and still looking into this. Maybe I missed something, or misunderstood something. I can’t guarantee anything except that I took an honest, hard look at it and when I got deep down in the weeds I found things that left me skeptical for the reasons stated.
If anyone has more details, or conflicting information, please provide it in the comments. I will welcome further information of clarifications, meanwhile, you have my findings to date.
Hi Michael,
Just here to clarify a few things and offer additional context, especially since some of what you’ve presented includes outdated assumptions about air-gapping, “de minimis” logic, and the scope of Starlink’s role in voting infrastructure.
Poll Books vs. Tabulators: Yes, Starlink was “officially” contracted to service e-poll books in multiple counties. What’s been largely overlooked is that many poll books share ports and internal pathways with tabulation systems—especially when all components run through a central UPS or networked control unit. In counties using centralized setups or vendor-integrated “turnkey” packages, the distinction between air-gapped systems and externally connected components becomes blurrier than it should be.
Air-Gapping Is No Longer a Guarantee: The claim that tabulators are “air-gapped” is often cited, but vendor documentation and independent testing contradict that. ES&S DS200s, for example, have modem capabilities that have been activated in previous elections. Add to that the Eaton/Tripp Lite UPS devices with SNMP-enabled network cards—often sitting directly between tabulators and their power/network environment—and it becomes clear there were viable pathways for intrusion, even if indirect.
The Pro V&V ‘De Minimis’ Loophole: This is a bigger deal than most people realize. Pro V&V certified software changes as “de minimis”—which legally sidesteps a full recertification—but the magnitude of those changes, particularly firmware-level updates across multiple counties, raises major red flags. This isn’t a theoretical concern—it’s part of documented complaints from at least three states.
Starlink’s Role Is About Access, Not Visibility: No one is saying Starlink was directly connected to every tabulator. The concern is command-and-control level access. Starlink’s DTC capability—enabled by the Gen2 satellite fleet and confirmed by Musk’s own documentation—bypasses traditional network routes altogether. This isn’t your average ISP connection. It’s a dedicated, private mesh that can sync with smart hardware in real time, independent of local firewalls, and it’s also the reason the “air-gap” dialogue is a nonstarter.
The Ramapo Example (Which I Never Cited): Correct, the voting patterns in ultra-Orthodox communities follow bloc behavior. But that wasn’t my claim. I’ve focused on Clarkstown, where precinct-level data doesn’t follow that sociological trend and includes affidavits from voters whose ballots are inexplicably absent or distorted.
Evidence vs. Admission: The fact that a post-election forensic audit hasn’t caught this yet doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Many audits are partial, lack administrative access, are candidate-specific, or rely on vendor-provided data. Our report is based on data inconsistencies, confirmed system access pathways, contract timelines, and alignment between satellite activation and vote spikes in key precincts.
You said: if someone can offer more information or a correction, you're open to hearing it. This isn’t just a theory anymore—it’s an evidence-based hypothesis backed by infrastructure records, expert forensic analysis, and patterns too precise to dismiss. Add to that a year’s worth of ‘confessions,’ if you will, from the very person who benefited most from the heist.
We’ve laid the groundwork—there’s more than enough evidence for state attorneys general to open an investigation.
Thanks! - TWH
Thanks Michael, I read that article a few days ago and while it does seem plausible, I was hoping someone would address the issue from an expert and knowledgeable perspective. So thanks for that, and great analysis as always.
That said, the lawsuit just moved forward with discovery, so we are far from fully understanding whether any fraud took place. I’m not saying either way, but it’s far too early to draw conclusions.
Additionally, another aspect you left out how Leonard Leo sold Tripp Lite to Eaton Corporation in 2021, and Eaton had a partnership with Palantir, which eventually bought the company before the election. My only question is why? What use does Eaton have for Palantir? They just make UPS systems, circuit breakers and power distribution units. That said, Palantir also has the ability to erase any changes to the system permanently, so we may be ever know for sure; either way.
Furthermore, when you consider how Trump tried to commit fraud during the 2020 election by sending alternative electors to Washington, Trump’s attempt to extort Secretary’s of State to find additional votes, and his incitement of the J6th insurrection; it only adds credence to the fact that MAGA will stop at nothing to win; including cheating!
Not to mention, all the guardrails on social media being taken down a year before the election (2024); allowing foreign countries and corporations to implement disinformation campaigns with impunity, while Musk and Zuckerberg utilized nefarious algorithms to shape public opinion in order to help Trump.
Couple this with several Republican operatives gaining illegal access to voter machines in Colorado and Georgia (2020), and Cyber Ninja being hired to audit Maricopa County’s election results; it doesn’t bode well for Trump or MAGA.
Moreover, does anyone actually believe Cyber Ninjas was hired to find evidence of bamboo fibers in the ballots (deflection)? This is a firm that specializes in application security and digital protection (system vulnerabilities), not election audits!
Therefore, while we have little to no evidence of actual fraud (YET), there was certainly a will and an intent to do whatever was necessary to win the election. As far as MAGA is concerned; winning is a ZERO SUM GAME; nothing is beyond the pale for these corrupt fascists! IMHO…:)