When Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump share the debate stage Tuesday night, voters will have their first and possibly only chance to view both candidates side-by-side in a matchup that started just about seven weeks ago, when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. The stakes are high as Harris and Trump remain locked in an incredibly tight contest, days before ballots are mailed out in some key states.

We already know a lot about how each candidate debates and their likely weaknesses on the stage. Harris is perceived as a quick-witted debater but could be on the defensive about her recent position shifts as she courts general election voters. Trump won the last debate of this election — but against a very different candidate.

(You can watch the 90-minute debate starting at 9 p.m. Eastern on ABC News’s properties, including ABC News Live’s streaming online, Disney Plus and Hulu. The Washington Post will have coverage of the debate beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern.)

Here’s what each candidate needs to do — and avoid doing — to be seen as the winner.

Harris needs to define herself as something new, not more of the same

Harris’s job in this debate is pretty simple (although not easy), say Democratic strategists: She needs to tell voters who she is, what she stands for and what kind of president she would be.

She has pitched herself on the campaign trail as a realist who can be trusted to use common sense. But in her 2020 primary run, she struggled to articulate clear positions and has been criticized for appearing to switch sides under political pressure. For example, some voters in Pennsylvania worry she can’t be trusted after opposing fracking while running in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. She now says she wouldn’t try to ban it.

“A lot of people will watch the debate and ask themselves: ‘Can I see Kamala Harris in the role of president?’” said Democratic strategist Tim Hogan.

The candidate who will win the election is the candidate seen as the most able to bring about change, say strategists on both sides. A New York Times/Siena College poll found 61 percent of likely voters said they want major change from Biden. Democrats argue Harris inhabits an ethos of change simply by being a younger, fresher candidate, and her potential to become the first woman president. They hope Trump will look stale on the stage next to her.

“You saw her get a bump when the Democratic Party was able to meet that desire for a change ticket that the Republicans couldn’t,” said Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist J.J. Balaban.

Yet Trump is expected to make the case that Harris will be a continuation of the Biden presidency and can’t be trusted. So far, Harris hasn’t strayed far from Biden’s positions, offering proposals that build on his economic and social work.

Harris needs to bring her prosecutorial style to Trump, but not get dragged down

Harris is viewed as a sharp debater, capable of reading the room and offering a viral quip in an unexpected moment, say those who have watched her debate for years. In the Senate, she took a courtroom-style approach to questioning Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, getting Brett M. Kavanaugh to admit he couldn’t think of any laws that govern a man’s body.

But as she prosecutes Trump, Harris needs to avoid being drawn into an ugly back-and-forth with him. It’s one of the tougher parts of debating him, Democrats say, because he will inevitably throw out myriad falsehoods and attacks that are tough to leave unanswered. But Harris may simply not have time to respond to every claim he makes.

“You have to parry his attacks and you have to push back,” said Hogan, “but you also don’t want to get stuck there.”

It will be Harris’s first presidential debate, although she did participate in a vice-presidential debate in 2020 and multiple primary debates. By contrast, this will be Trump’s seventh presidential debate in a general election.

“Trump has been hit 1,000 times,” said Stan Barnes, a former Republican state senator in Arizona and a political consultant. “But she has not withstood scrutiny in the public sphere from an adversarial opponent. I’d much rather be Trump in this debate than her.”

Trump needs to avoid attacking Harris’s race and gender

And he needs to just generally avoid becoming flustered, say strategists on both sides.

That’s because Trump doesn’t have to go after Harris personally, Republicans say. Many think if it’s an election focused on the issues, he wins. “He needs to focus on what has led to immense voter dissatisfaction across America,” said Republican strategist Jesse Hunt. “There is a very clear path to victory here, and it is holding Kamala Harris accountable for a terrible record in office with Joe Biden, and all of her past positions that her campaign team has now deemed incredibly unpopular.”

For this, the format of the debate favors Trump: Just as in his debate against Biden, the microphones will be off when it’s not his turn to speak, preventing him from interrupting Harris to interject an insult that might come across as bullying.

Trump needs to come up with an answer on abortion

Trump seems keenly aware his party is on the wrong side of public opinion on abortion. Yet when he is talking about it, he often agitates his social conservative base or alienates swing voters as he appears to flip-flop. Recently, he indicated he would vote in Florida for an amendment protecting abortion rights until viability (which is around 24 weeks of pregnancy) — then said he wouldn’t under pressure from social conservatives to support Florida’s six-week ban.

As he fumbles on what to say about abortion, Trump has also been struggling to win over female voters. A recent CNN/SSRS poll shows Harris leading Trump by 18 points among suburban women in Pennsylvania, and these are the voters who could help decide this election.

LONDON — Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, threatening sanctions for a move that pulls Tehran more deeply into the Russia-Ukraine conflict as Kyiv seeks U.S. permission to strike more deeply into Russian territory.

Blinken said new sanctions would be announced later Tuesday, including measures against Iran Air.

“We’ve warned Tehran publicly, we’ve warned Tehran privately, that taking this step would be a dangerous escalation,” Blinken said. “Russia has now received shipments of these missiles.”

He added that Russia would likely use the shipments within weeks.

Iranian officials this week denied that they had sent weapons to Russia.

The potent weapons bolster Moscow’s armory at a pivotal moment in its grinding war on Ukraine, as Kyiv pushes into Russia but faces setbacks in its east. With Ukrainians clamoring for expanded U.S. weapons assistance, Blinken said that he would visit Kyiv for consultations with its leadership, a rare visit by a cabinet-level official to the wartime capital.

Russia has been on a global hunt to bolster its stockpiles, reasoning that if it can outlast Kyiv’s backers and grind the country into submission, it will eventually prevail. Iran has supplied Russia with attack drones, but until recently held back from offering more powerful weaponry, in apparent deference to U.S. and European warnings that to do so would trigger a wave of painful sanctions.

The Iranian move further extends the realignment of global actors that was accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, bringing together the U.S. antagonists of Russia, China and Iran in an increasingly unified band that is seeking to push back on U.S. influence around the world. Though none of the countries were friendly to Washington before the war, their mutual mistrust of each other previously kept them from working together effectively.

Blinken did not say when the missiles had been shipped to Russia. Iran has a new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who has signaled a more moderate approach toward Washington and Europe. The weapons shipment to Moscow runs contrary to that effort, with European countries offering little tolerance for actions that tip the balance toward Russia’s side.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also pushed back against the accusation.

“Not every time information of this kind corresponds to reality. We are developing dialogue with Iran in the most sensitive areas and will continue to do so,” he told reporters on Monday.

Iran has also been deeply involved in the conflict in the Mideast, supplying weaponry to its proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, and also at times striking directly against Israel. Washington and other nations have been focused on restraining Iran to avoid escalation toward a regional war, an effort that has so far been successful even amid the mounting civilian toll in Gaza.

At a news conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that reports Russia had received ballistic missiles from Iran “is very much of our immediate concern.”

Ukraine is bracing itself for a painful winter, with Russian attacks eroding its energy infrastructure and putting its population at risk for long stretches without power or heat as the dark and cold settle over the country.

Shmyhal warned last week that Ukraine has information Russia is planning to launch new attacks on energy targets but said Tuesday that it is premature to make predictions about just how often residents of major cities will be without power this winter.

Ukrainian officials are busy reinforcing critical energy infrastructure with sandbags and concrete to protect from Russian attacks, he said, and will rely on air defense systems, including those promised from foreign partners.

Blackouts are difficult for regular civilians, he said, but when they affect the economy and defense sectors, they become “a threat to our national security, so we have to be very responsible.”

As his country faces waves of Russian bombardment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has become more vocal about his demand to be able to use long-range U.S. missile systems known as ATACMS against targets deep in Russian territory. President Joe Biden has so far barred their use inside Russia, worried that could be interpreted as an escalatory move against Russia and draw Washington into a more direct confrontation with Russia.

Zelensky on Friday made his case in person at a gathering of his military backers in Germany, including to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, but the top U.S. defense official remains unconvinced. The Department of Defense continues to recommend against allowing ATACMS to be used inside Russian territory, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about internal administration discussions.

Ukraine has already proved to its partners that it can target military objects inside Russia successfully and responsibly, Shmyhal said. Expanding the country’s ability to do so “means more security for our people, our civilians, our children, Ukraine.”

“If we can destroy the military targets and weapon systems in the territory of the enemy then it means more security for our people, our civilians, our children, Ukraine,” he said.

Blinken has generally been more open to Ukrainian requests than others in the Biden administration, and Wednesday’s discussions in Kyiv will be a chance to hear directly from Zelensky and his newly reshuffled cabinet.

Blinken’s longtime counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, stepped down last week and was replaced by his deputy, Andrii Sybiha, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey who has also worked in the presidential office.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy will accompany Blinken to Kyiv on Wednesday, in his first since coming to office in July.

Shortly afterward, Zelensky is expected to travel to the United States, where he will attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting of heads of state. He has also said he hopes to present a “victory plan” to Biden, one element of which involves his military’s recent surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

O’Grady reported from Kyiv.

Temperatures have cooled, a new school year has started and the national political spotlight is trained Tuesday on the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump — but there are still states holding primaries. Voters in Delaware, New Hampshire and Rhode Island will cast their ballots in a slate of primary races Tuesday, the last ones of the 2024 election cycle.

Delaware at-large congressional primary

Three candidates are running in the Democratic primary for the state’s single at-large congressional seat: businessman Earl Cooper, state Sen. Sarah McBride and Elias Weir. Of those, McBride is the heavy favorite to win the primary and would become the first openly transgender member of Congress in U.S. history if she is elected in November.

President Joe Biden won his home state of Delaware in 2020 by nearly 19 percentage points, and the winner of the Democratic primary is favored to win the general election to fill the seat of Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D). Rochester announced last year she would run for Senate after Sen. Tom Carper (D) announced he would not seek reelection to a fifth term.

Two candidates are running in the Republican primary: Air Force veteran Donyale Hall and former police officer John Whalen III. The winner of the GOP primary will advance to November’s general election.

Delaware gubernatorial primary

Three candidates are on the Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot, hoping for a chance to succeed Delaware Gov. John Carney (D), who is term-limited. Delaware Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who has served alongside Carney since 2017, has the support of the governor as well as the state’s Democratic Party. However, she has also been dogged by a recent investigation into inconsistencies in her past campaign finance reports; Hall-Long has denied any wrongdoing by her campaign.

New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and Collin O’Mara, a former state environmental secretary, are also running. The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored to win the general election in November.

Three Republicans are running: state House Rep. Mike Ramone, ex-New York City police officer Jerrold Price and Bobby Williamson.

New Hampshire gubernatorial primaries

A half-dozen candidates have jumped into the Republican gubernatorial primary after New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) announced last year he would not seek reelection. They include former U.S. senator Kelly Ayotte, Shaun Fife, Robert McClory, Richard McMenamon II, Chuck Morse and Frank Staples.

Three candidates are running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary: former Manchester mayor Joyce Craig, small business owner Jonathan Kiper and lawyer and New Hampshire Executive Council member Cinde Warmington.

Though Biden won the state by more than seven percentage points in 2020, the governor’s race is seen as a toss-up. Sununu, a Republican, has served in office since 2017.

New Hampshire 1st Congressional District primary

Incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas (D) will face little-known challenger Kevin Rondeau in the Democratic primary for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, which covers the southeastern portion of the state, including its largest city, Manchester. Pappas was first elected in 2018 and is seeking his fourth term in Congress. Rondeau ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2020 and 2022.

In the Republican primary, seven candidates are vying for a chance to advance to the general election: Christian Bright, Joseph Kelly Levasseur, Andy Martin, Walter McFarlane III, Hollie Noveletsky and Russell Prescott. The winner of the GOP primary will probably face Pappas in November.

New Hampshire 2nd Congressional District primary

Two candidates are running in the Democratic primary for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District: Maggie Goodlander, a lawyer who previously served in the Justice Department as an assistant attorney general, and Colin Van Ostern, a former member of the New Hampshire Executive Council. Both are hoping to succeed Rep. Annie Kuster (D), who announced earlier this year she would retire after six terms in Congress.

Goodlander is married to Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser. The race between her and Van Ostern has focused heavily on the fight for reproductive rights and the sources of the millions of dollars that have been poured into the unusually expensive primary.

The district covers much of the northern and western parts of the state, including the capital, Concord. The winner of the Democratic primary is favored to win the general election; Biden won the district by more than eight percentage points in 2020.

More than a dozen candidates are running in the GOP primary for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District. The winner of the Republican primary will go on to face the winner of a contentious Democratic primary in the general election, which the Democrat is favored to win.

Rhode Island Senate primary

Incumbent Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) is facing challenger Michael Costa in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Rhode Island.

U.S. Army veteran Raymond McKay and state lawmaker Patricia Morgan are running in the Republican primary to challenge him.

Democrats are favored to hang on to the seat in the general election in November. Biden won the state handily in 2020, defeating Donald Trump by more than 20 percentage points.

Former president Donald Trump certainly recognizes that he’s in a tricky position on abortion. Running for president in 2016 and seeking to bolster his support among religious conservatives, he promised to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade’s protection of access to abortion. He did; they did. And now he’s running for president again, part of his record being that he’s the guy who upended the ability of women to have access to the procedure.

Trump has tried to spin this legacy as a demonstration of his ability to get things done.

“What we’re doing is bringing it back to the states where everybody wanted it,” he said during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention this summer. “Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody wanted abortion brought back. They didn’t want Roe v. Wade in the federal government. They wanted it — everybody wanted it back.”

This is untrue for various reasons, particularly that Democrats and liberals were not asking that legal protections for abortion access be reversed. But it’s where Trump has landed: a 10th Amendment, states’-rights rationale for what he did while serving as president.

If there’s one thing that American history demonstrates, though, it’s that a lack of federal protections allows states to finagle the rules, should they want to, to achieve the outcome they’re looking for. “Letting states decide” theoretically means letting state residents decide, but generally, instead, means letting elected representatives decide. And that often means having partisan actors use the rules to secure or protect their own power.

What has “let the states decide” on abortion looked like in practice?

It has meant that Republicans on Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers blocked ballot access for a constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion two years ago because some presentations of the ballot language lacked clear spaces between the words. The state Supreme Court ultimately allowed the amendment to be put before voters.

It has meant an effort by Ohio’s Republican secretary of state to present loaded language to voters considering an amendment protecting abortion in that state. The Republican-majority legislature also created a special election before the vote on the abortion amendment with the goal of making it harder to amend the state constitution.

In both of those cases, the efforts ultimately failed and voters were allowed to vote on the question. In each case — as in each of seven such electoral tests since Roe was overturned — supporters of increasing access to abortion were victorious.

And that, of course, is what Republicans are trying to prevent. Well, that and having abortion-access measures on the November ballot that might drive up turnout among voters who would also cast a ballot against Trump.

On Monday, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft decertified a measure slated for the upcoming election that, if passed, would overturn the state’s ban on abortion. The ostensible rationale was that petitions for the ballot measure didn’t specify which statutes would be repealed with its passage. As St. Louis Public Radio has reported, though, other similar ballot measures passed by voters and put into effect similarly lacked the purportedly required language.

A proposed amendment on the November ballot in Florida similarly aims to restore access to abortion in that state. (Trump, who lives in the state, has said he’ll oppose the measure.) A state agency created a website that advocates the amendment’s defeat. Voters who signed petitions in support of the amendment have been contacted by state law enforcement in a purported effort to uncover fraudulent signatures — with the apparent aim of getting the amendment removed from the ballot.

In Arizona, a judge rejected a proposal from Republican legislators that would use the phrase “unborn human being” in material provided to voters about an initiative aimed at protecting access to abortion.

Republicans in Arkansas had more luck. In July, the office of the Republican secretary of state rejected petitions submitted in support of the amendment because organizers hadn’t filed separate paperwork about the use of paid signature-gatherers. Last month, the conservative-majority Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the move.

None of this is novel or surprising. It is, instead, what history suggests would happen if states are given a new ability to adjudicate a politically polarizing issue. Power is often manifested in breadth, in the ability to find some tendril somewhere in some rule book that can serve as the mechanism — or pretext — for getting what you want. It is not some cosmic coincidence or broad organizing failure that’s led to so many administrative roadblocks. It’s officials using administrative power in an effort to keep state residents from weighing in.

It’s Jim Crow-era literacy tests applied to petition organizers.

The chairman of the board of elections in Montgomery County, Pa., was well acquainted with the regular attendees at his monthly meetings who peddled old, debunked voting conspiracy theories.

But something changed after April 4, the chairman, Neil Makhija, explained in an interview. That was the day Elon Musk retweeted a false claim that as many as 2 million noncitizens had been registered to vote in Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Suddenly, the same people were coming to the meetings with a new, unsubstantiated theory of voter fraud that appeared to align with Musk’s latest post: They were convinced that droves of noncitizens were voting illegally in their suburban Philadelphia county of nearly a million people.

For Makhija, a Democrat who is also a member of the county board of commissioners, it was a lesson in the influence of Musk, the South Africa-born billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. In the two years since he bought Twitter, now X, Musk has transformed it into a primary source of false election rumors, both by spreading them on his own account, which has 197 million followers, and lowering some of the site’s guardrails around misinformation.

“You have one of the richest men in the world putting out this idea that the elections are fraudulent and the results are questionable,” Makhija said. “X has obviously become a platform for misinformation and disinformation. Because we know it’s not true.”

Musk’s online utterances don’t stay online. His false and misleading election posts add to the deluge of inaccurate information plaguing voting officials across the country. Election officials say his posts about supposed voter fraud often coincide with an increase in baseless requests to purge voter rolls and heighten their worry over violent threats. Experts say Musk is uniquely dangerous as a purveyor of misinformation because his digital following stretches well beyond the political realm and into the technology and investment sectors, where his business achievements have earned him credibility.

After Musk bought Twitter, he made deep cuts in staff responsible for maintaining standards on the site, courted major conservative figures, and reoriented the platform to boost the reach of his account, which frequently spreads false statements without being subject to the kinds of fact checks that previously existed on the site. He reinstated accounts previously banned for violating the platform’s rules, including Donald Trump’s, and promised to usher in a less restrictive era.

Musk long described his politics as libertarian, but in recent years, he has become an increasingly outspoken supporter of conservative causes. He has said he supported Democrats for president between 2008 and 2020, but after the assassination attempt on Trump in July, Musk posted a photo of the Republican presidential candidate, face bloodied, with his fist in the air, and endorsed him for 2024 and welcomed him back to X with a live-streamed conversation between the two. Last week, Trump said that if elected, he would put Musk in charge of a government efficiency commission.

This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen election officials and experts, some of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to protect themselves and their organizations in a polarized election season. Most of them said it’s difficult to prove that Musk has caused the inundation of demands from misinformed voters but that it’s clear to them the two have coincided and are related.

Musk, who bought Twitter in November 2022, has repeatedly claimed without evidence that Democrats are “importing” undocumented people to vote in the coming election, a popular 2024 iteration of the Great Replacement Theory, which holds that a global elite is replacing European-descended populations with non-White people. He has falsely asserted that electronic voting machines are unreliable and that the country should return to hand-counting ballots. And he has promoted deepfakes and other deceptive images aimed at undermining politicians he doesn’t support.

Between his purchase of Twitter and Thursday, Musk’s 52 posts or reposts about noncitizen voting — one of the main topics of false or misleading election claims he made in that time period — drew almost 700 million views, according to a Post analysis.

A separate analysis found that 50 of Musk’s false or misleading claims about the U.S. election between Jan. 1 and July 31 were debunked by independent fact-checkers and still generated almost 1.2 billion views, according to a recent study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. None displayed community notes, X’s term for user-generated fact checks that Musk has promised serve as an “immediate way to refute anything false” that is posted on the platform.

X did not respond to a detailed list of questions for Musk.

His frequent amplification of election untruths has spurred typically low-profile election officials to publicly fact-check him. His immense reach far outstrips theirs, so they say they attempt to blunt the damage of his false posts by piggybacking on them with truthful fact checks of their own.

But in their effort to spread accurate election information, they are up against a formidable adversary. “The great risk in a privatized public sphere,” said Sophia Rosenfeld, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Democracy and Truth: A Short History,” is that the owner, in this case, Musk, “can control both the flow of information and the content of that information to suit their own needs, whether financial, ideological, or both.”

Musk’s control of X and his large following mean a single post from him can effectively take fringe election-denial falsehoods mainstream, experts say.

In Michigan, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said her office tracked a direct correlation between Musk’s inaccurate tweets about elections and subsequent waves of harassment of local and state election administrators.

“Every time he has put something out falsely questioning the integrity of our elections, there is a dramatic uptick in threats and vitriol made to us on social media,” Benson said. “Sometimes that translates into offline threats that my security team needs to then be made aware of.”

In Arizona, Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer said he sees a link between Musk’s misinformation and the scores of requests he and other election administrators have received, mostly unfounded, to remove noncitizens from voter rolls. “He’s by no means unique,” Richer said. “He just happens to have a very, very large microphone.”

Musk has more followers than any other account on X. He has designed the platform to boost his posts more than those of other accounts. He ignores the well-established election safeguards in this country, election officials say.

On Aug. 13, Musk posted about U.S. voting machines’ potential vulnerability to hacking. “Let’s use paper ballots!” Musk wrote, in a post that received nearly 22 million views. The next day, Jen Easterly, the director of the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), responded with a seven-part fact-check thread: “Great to see your focus on the security of our nation’s elections. Definitely agree on paper ballots,” Easterly wrote, tagging Musk. “Good news is that some 95% of registered voters now live in jurisdictions that have voter verified paper records.” Her most popular response to Musk received 53,900 views.

Musk’s first tweet that The Post identified as explicitly referencing noncitizen voting came on Dec. 21, 2023.

“A member of Congress told me that this is a deliberate means of importing future left-wing voters. Viewed through that lens, this administration’s facilitation of massive illegal immigration precisely matches their goal,” Musk, who didn’t identify the lawmaker, wrote in reply to a tweet by Republican donor and tech investor Joe Lonsdale about an undocumented immigrant allegedly involved in a hit-and-run.

From that first mention, Musk went on to post about alleged voting by noncitizens dozens of times in the following months, replying to agree with dozens more posts by others promoting spurious theories about noncitizen voting, which experts say is extremely rare.

Musk accused Democrats of “importing” or having “imported” voters on two dozen separate occasions, echoing his first post on the topic. And he often replied to or retweeted users who mock diversity initiatives and other liberal causes.

In Montgomery County, Pa., one result of Musk’s tweet, according to Makhija, has been a regular stream of questions about noncitizen voting at public meetings. A sign of how difficult it is for election officials to correct Musk’s false claims: One public commenter at the election board’s June 27 meeting said the absence of evidence of noncitizen voting was a failure of the county board to find it. Another commenter demanded that signs be posted at every polling location declaring that noncitizens may not vote.

“It’s a commonsense way to guarantee that U.S. citizens are not disenfranchised,” that woman said.

Musk’s claims about noncitizen voting dovetail with a major Republican legislative effort: the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, a proposal Republicans have prioritized as an election-year talking point even as research shows noncitizens illegally registering and casting ballots in federal elections is an exceptionally infrequent occurrence.

Musk has said that he wants the elections this year to be under a “microscope,” according to a prominent Republican who has spoken to him. He has sometimes peppered Trump’s advisers with questions about what they’re doing to protect the election, according to the Republican and other people familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. He asked the Republican National Committee for a briefing on their election integrity efforts in early 2024, people familiar with the matter said.

At a February meeting of billionaires and top political strategists at the Palm Beach, Fla., mansion of GOP megadonor and investor Nelson Peltz, Musk said that he feared immigrants coming into the country would vote, making it harder for Republicans to win elections, according to attendees.

In April, Musk retweeted a post from the account @EndWokeness alleging, without evidence, that large numbers of voters were registering in the United States without identification. Musk added the comment: “extremely concerning.” His post received 59 million views.

The original post asserted that “the number of voters without a photo ID is SKYROCKETING in 3 key swing states: Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania.” The account incorrectly referenced data from the Social Security Administration, which verifies information any time a state registers a new voter without a photo ID. Anyone who registers to vote with only a name, date of birth and a Social Security number is referred to the Social Security Administration for verification. The post conflated those figures with the number of people who had been verified automatically and alleged that those three states allowed over 2 million undocumented people to register to vote.

Following that false post, election officials in Texas and Arizona publicly fact-checked the claim.

Jane Nelson, the Republican Texas secretary of state who was appointed last year by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, issued a statement calling the information Musk shared “totally inaccurate.” The post received 206,000 views. Nelson did not respond to a request for comment.

In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections has seen an “uptick in questions, concerns and complaints about how much election officials do to ensure noncitizens cannot vote in North Carolina,” which coincides with the spike in posts on noncitizen voting from Musk, according to Patrick Gannon, the board’s spokesman.

“He’s one of the most influential people in the world, with like a gagillion followers,” Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, said. “My goal [in responding to him] was just piggybacking on the topic to offer accurate information to anyone who would care to learn more about the subject and are willing to go into the comments.”

Richer reposted Musk’s message with an eight-part response debunking the original post. “Only 39,653 new voters have registered in Maricopa County in 2024 in total. For Arizona, that number is about 60,000,” Richer wrote on X. His initial post received 2.5 million views, orders of magnitude fewer than Musk’s.

He added that “there is zero validity to the suggestion in the original post that 220,731 illegal immigrants have registered in Arizona in 2024.”

Richer, who lost his bid for reelection in the Republican primary in July, said that “certainly we see a correlative link” between Musk’s misinformation and the requests to remove noncitizens from voter rolls, “especially when he started asking about noncitizen voting happening in elections.”

Musk appears undeterred. On Wednesday, America First Legal, run by former Trump administration officials, posted a copy of its lawsuit on X that it was suing “ALL 15 counties in Arizona for refusing to remove illegals from their voter rolls.” Musk replied in a post that garnered 38 million views: “Arizona is refusing to remove illegals from voter rolls?”

Richer responded to Musk, explaining that lawsuits can make unproven allegations and can also be used as a way to generate headlines and not necessarily legal victories. Richer wrote that the suit “will lose. Just like every lawsuit (50+) that has been filed against my office since I took office.”

Richer concluded by repeating an offer to explain to Musk how Arizona elections work. Musk did not respond.

“Musk puts out this malarkey and he says nonsense, uneducated things and he gets corrected,” said Tom Irvine, who for 15 years was the primary outside counsel for elections in Maricopa and defended the county against election challenges following the 2020 presidential election. “And then he says it again and again and again.”

Musk’s frequent posts about voter fraud have made him useful to election conspiracy theory groups such as Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. “Michigan Fair Elections” is the group’s Michigan arm, and it runs an active blog that cites Musk regularly.

Musk has been lauded several times by the right-wing conspiracy site the Gateway Pundit, which recently praised Musk with headlines such as: “HE GETS IT! Elon Musk Steps Up Election Integrity Crusade.”

The falsehoods spreading on X have not just transformed a single platform. Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his immediate retreat from moderating messages “created a permission structure for other platforms to also retreat from content moderation,” said Ishan Mehta, director of the media and democracy program at Common Cause, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights and other democracy-related issues. “Every other major platform can now point to X and say, ‘At least we’re not as bad as they are.’”

Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.