Elon Musk, Eric Trump mislead on New York City ballot design

"The New York City ballot form is a scam!" Musk wrote on his X platform during the November 4, 2025 Election Day.

The billionaire tech mogul and close ally of US President Donald Trump shared a photo of a ballot and noted that former New York state governor Cuomo's name was listed "last in bottom right" while "other mayoral candidates appear twice."

He later shared another post to his more than 228 million followers that claimed the ballot's layout would "hurt Cuomo -- and therefore help Zohran."

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Screenshot from X taken November 4, 2025

Similar claims rocketed across X as New Yorkers headed to the polls for the first major elections since Trump's takeover of the White House.

Within an hour of polls closing, broadcasters projected the 34-year-old Mamdani, a Muslim and self-described socialist, as the winner over Cuomo and Sliwa.

"I hope everybody starts to understand the games that they play," Eric Trump wrote as he shared Musk's post.

The president's son likened the ballot layout to emailed bomb threats that forced brief closures at several polling stations in New Jersey, where there were also elections taking place.

The anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok also promoted Musk's post, writing: "Wow. Democrats have to cheat in order to win." 

Another widespread post claimed the ballot was mocked up in "the exact combination to ensure Mamdani wins."

But experts told AFP that despite the allegations of malfeasance, there is nothing irregular about the ballots provided to voters in America's financial capital. In fact, they are in line with the state's election law (archived here).

Mamdani and Sliwa both appear twice because, under a practice known as "fusion voting," they were both endorsed by multiple parties (archived here).

"The Elon Musk tweet, that's just wrong," George Washington University lecturer Jack Santucci, an adjunct fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, told AFP in a November 4 interview (archived here).

He said the repetition of Mamdani's and Sliwa's names on the ballot is "not abnormal at all."

New York election law

Kathleen McGrath, director of public information for the New York State Board of Elections, told AFP in a November 4 email that the ballot design criticized by Musk and others actually "represents the proper process and format as laid out in state election law."

She cited two provisions that govern the organization of candidates' names on ballots (archived here).

The first says the four political parties officially recognized by the state must appear on all ballots in order of the number of votes each party's nominee received in the most recent gubernatorial election (archived here). In their 2025 order, those parties are Democratic, Republican, Conservative and Working Families.

The second provision says the board of elections that prepares the ballot determines how any independent party candidates should appear below nominees from each of the officially recognized parties. New York City's board of elections decided to arrange them based on when they filed to run, McGrath said.

"Zohran Mamdani was chosen as the nominee for both the Democratic and Working Families parties, so his ballot positions would be first and fourth, respectively," McGrath said.

Sliwa was endorsed by the Republican Party and also by the independent Protect Animals party, putting his name second and fifth, according to McGrath.

"All other candidates have one ballot slot as they have been nominated by only one party or independent body," she added, noting that Cuomo's Fight and Deliver party filed second to last.

AFP also reached out to the city's board of elections, but no response was forthcoming.

Fusion voting

Experts said fusion voting is a practice with a long history. Only a handful of states use it, which is why it may have raised alarms among onlookers.

"It is a device for letting multiple parties coalesce behind the single candidate," Santucci, from the Manhattan Institute, told AFP. "It was a widespread practice in the late 19th century, prior to the introduction of the government-printed ballot."

Susan Lerner, executive director of the nonprofit Common Cause New York, said in a November 4 interview that of the few places that allow fusion voting, New York is unique in that it also orders its ballots by party rather than candidate (archived here).

"There is a different column for every party, and if a voter is endorsed by more than one party, they will appear in more than one column," she said. "That can be confusing to voters."

The ballots instruct users to mark only one column, but if someone fills in two bubbles for the same name, the vote is counted only once under the larger party, Lerner said.

AFP has previously debunked other misinformation about both Mamdani and New York's 2025 election.

Gwen Roley and Manon Jacob contributed reporting to this fact check.