Claims in ‘Duty To Warn’ Letter to Harris Alleging Compromised Election Are Misleading

In the wake of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, a man named Stephen Spoonamore sent a post-election “duty to warn” letter to the defeated candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming he had uncovered evidence of hacking and fraud in the Nov. 5 election. 

Spoonamore’s allegations combined several elements to drive his point home, including mentions of swing-state vote manipulation, a $1 million daily sweepstakes managed by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s super political action committee (America PAC) and Election Day bomb threats. Spoonamore’s main claim was that it was a “near certainty” Harris truly won the election, not Trump.

Snopes received numerous reader emails asking whether Spoonamore’s claims were true. For example, one reader wrote, “Does Steven Spoonamore letter have a basis in fact?” Another reader wanted to know, “[Does the] ‘duty to warn’ letter to VP Harris have any legitimacy, who wrote it [and] is [it] possible what the letter suggests?”

‘Duty To Warn’

On Nov. 8 — three days after the election — Spoonamore took to the Spoutible social media network to spell out some of his claims of election hacking and fraud in a 14-post thread (archived). One of the posts featured a picture of a “duty to warn” letter listing some of his concerns (archived). He addressed the letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Seven days later, on Nov. 15, Spoonamore posted the text of a second and more substantial “duty to warn” letter on the Substack publishing platform  He addressed that letter to Harris (archived).

That letter suggested that one or more unnamed bad actors manipulated votes in the seven swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He asserted the bad actors inserted false results into those states’ voting systems by way of a number of “bullet vote” ballots displaying only a vote for Trump and leaving all other races blank. In another part of the letter, he said Musk’s America PAC and its sweepstakes offering $1 million daily prizes to prospective voters who signed Musk’s petition captured voter information that bad actors later secretly used to carry out their scheme. He also said the Election Day bomb threats at election-related locations may have served as distractions or diversions, or as a fail-safe in the case Trump lost (his campaign could claim a disrupted “chain of custody” for ballots).

In our examination of Spoonamore’s claims, we found discrepancies in the purported vote tallies and a lack of evidence for his other assertions. In other words, much of what he alleged amounts to a hypothesis grounded in mere speculation. Mainly, some of the numbers Spoonamore cited as evidence to prove his claims weren’t anywhere near the latest publicly available election results. 

We contacted officials at state and federal levels with questions about Spoonamore’s claims. We also reached out to Spoonamore via email and X but did not receive a response after more than two days.

Who Is Stephen Spoonamore?

As of this writing, Spoonamore’s LinkedIn page says he resides in Pennsylvania and describes him as a “C-suite veteran” and “technology policy developer.” His job history lists roles in media, communications, water treatment technology, information technology, electronics and, most recently, the building of software primarily for medical imaging. He recently noted (archived) on X he is “NOT a data scientist” but rather described himself as “a tech executive and network engineer.” According to Ballotpedia, he ran an unsuccessful campaign as an independent for a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives in 2016.

In the “duty to warn” letter to Harris, Spoonamore referred to himself as a “lifelong Republican” and cited numerous purported credentials, including working with clients at federal departments, delivering lectures, carrying out a special review and authoring hacking risk analyses.

Spoonamore’s Plea to Harris

In Spoonamore’s letter to Harris, he declared, “You should reverse your concession, call for both a full investigation of criminal activity and demand hand recounts in all seven swing states. In my professional view there are multiple and extremely clear indications the presidential vote was willfully compromised.”

He continued: “In my view it is a near certainty the results have been changed at a scale which reversed the U.S. presidential election. They imply there is a chance a hand recount will show you won more votes. I am stating a hand recount will most likely show you did win.”

Spoonamore’s Hypothesis of Election Hacking

Spoonamore’s letter to Harris spelled out his belief that “a capable and skilled series of exploits, electronic tools and hacks were used to change the presidential vote in all seven swing states” and that “these activities have reversed the outcomes in at least Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.”

He claimed that the “tell” pointing to the purported hacking was “a historically absurd number of Trump-only bullet ballots or undervote ballots.” Undervote ballots are when voters make a number of selections for some, but not all, races.

However, based on a full reading of his letter to Harris, as well as a Nov. 18 video interview on the Thom Hartmann Program YouTube channel, Spoonamore’s primary focus was “bullet vote” ballots — in this case meaning ballots displaying a vote for Trump but no selections for any other ballot items. 

North Carolina

Spoonamore alleged that the purported hacking and fraud in North Carolina proved to be “the most extreme” and that “the public results indicate over 350,000 voters cast a ballot for Trump and no other race.” However, this is false. 

According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections’ website, as of Nov. 21, 5,722,556 voters cast ballots. Of those, 5,699,152 ballots displayed votes in the race for president. The website also reported that 5,592,243 ballots bore votes for the state’s governor’s race. A comparison of the numbers for total votes and the gubernatorial race would reveal the maximum number of possible “bullet vote” ballots for all presidential candidates. The difference between the two numbers is 130,313 votes — a count nowhere near the 350,000 votes stated by Spoonamore. Trump received 183,048 more of North Carolinian’s votes than Harris.

During a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” discussion featuring Spoonamore, some users also noted the discrepancy between Spoonamore’s figures and the latest actual election results for North Carolina. (At least one other user asked about a different discrepancy involving Spoonamore’s numbers for Maricopa County, Arizona — a matter covered in the next section of this story.)

In an email, North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon told Snopes, “Without access to confidential data, there is no way that anyone could know what this individual claims to know about North Carolina’s presidential election. North Carolinians cast secret ballots, and cast vote records and ballot images that could potentially provide this information are confidential in North Carolina. My first step in fact-checking this would be to ask the writer to show his work.”

Arizona

Spoonamore’s letter to Harris said Arizona and Nevada also had large numbers of “bullet vote” ballots for Trump. He affirmed this assertion in the Hartmann interview.

For Arizona, he wrote in his letter, “AZ – 123K+ 7.2%+ of Trump’s total vote. Enough to reverse the outcome.” However, the latest election results for Arizona showed that — out of 3,429,637 total ballots cast — voters cast 3,389,319 total votes in the presidential race and 3,347,964 votes for U.S. Senate candidates. The difference between the total number of ballots and those voting for Senate is 81,673 votes — a count smaller than the more than 123,000 votes asserted by Spoonamore. Trump received 187,382 more votes in Arizona than Harris.

A spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State told Snopes they planned to post official (finalized) election results on Nov. 25, “where undervotes will be a category that can be reviewed and calculated.” They declined comment about Spoonamore’s letter to Harris.

Spoonamore’s letter also claimed that “Maricopa County AZ, seems to be the source of the vast majority, perhaps nearly all, of the AZ bullet ballot voters for Trump.” The Maricopa County government website displayed a total of 2,078,460 ballots cast, with 2,061,574 votes for presidential candidates and 2,034,256 for U.S. Senate candidates — making the maximum number of “bullet votes” 44,204. Trump received 71,515 more votes in Maricopa County than Harris. (The Maricopa County website displayed an additional 7,629 write-in votes for president in a PDF that did not appear on its main results page. That number of write-ins is included with the tabulation in this paragraph.)

Nevada and Other States

As for Nevada, Spoonamore contended in his letter, “NV – 43K+ 5.5%+ of Trump’s total vote. Enough to exceed recount threshold.” The Nevada government website (archived) reported that — out of 1,487,887 total ballots cast — 1,484,840 ballots contained votes for presidential candidates and 1,464,728 contained votes for U.S. Senate candidates. The mximum number of “bullet votes” is 23,159. Trump received 46,008 more votes in Nevada than Harris.

Spoonamore’s letter further said that five other states showed similar patterns of what he believed to be hacking and fraud. Our review of the latest results for Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not find outcomes substantially different than those for North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Department said, “Pennsylvania held a free, fair, safe and secure election.”

Spoonamore’s Claim that Musk Was Involved

On Oct. 19, 2024, Elon Musk announced that America PAC would award a daily sweepstakes prize of $1 million to people willing to sign his petition pledging support for the First and Second amendments. In October, the page specified: “This program is exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina.”

CNN reported on Oct. 23 that the Justice Department warned America PAC its sweepstakes may violate federal law, which bars paying people to register to vote. Musk’s petition was open only to registered voters.

On Nov. 4, ABC News reported the recipients of the $1 million-a-day sweepstakes were preselected, despite Musk’s claim that the giveaway’s “winners” would be randomly selected. The article also said a Philadelphia judge ruled that day that the sweepstakes could continue through Election Day.

Spoonamore’s letter to Harris claimed, “Musk’s team used this system to build a list of voters pledged to vote for Trump.” Spoonamore alleged that the street addresses asked for in Musk’s petition allowed bad actors to infiltrate election systems and cast fake votes: “Once they had the people’s names and street [addresses], this would allow for building a pool of ghost voters who could logically be marked for fake ballots, structured in a manner which matched ePollBook and precinct data.”

However, as of this writing on Nov. 21, the claim that bad actors used data from Musk’s America PAC sweepstakes to engage in election tampering is unfounded, given the lack of evidence to support it.

Spoonamore also pointed a finger at Starlink, a satellite network developed by SpaceX, of which Musk is the CEO. As we previously reported, claims that bad actors used Starlink to “hack” or “rig” the 2024 presidential election were also unfounded.

Election Day Bomb Threats

On Election Day, the FBI announced on its website that it was “aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far.”

CBS News journalist Scott MacFarlane reported, “Law enforcement officials estimate about 30 bomb threat hoaxes have targeted election-related locations nationwide, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Around 17 fake bomb threats have targeted the state of Georgia alone, two people familiar with the investigation told CBS News.”

Later, on Nov. 12, Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA-TV published an article saying that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported “over 60 bomb threats” on Election Day in his state alone.

In Spoonamore’s initial Spoutible thread, he wrote, “Now, why the bomb threats? They were NOT to allow for hacker access. The programming was already in place, they were to break chain of custody and produce legal grounds to not trust a recount. Every place that GOT a bomb threat is a place the courts will now have to consider the factual argument of whether the ballots COULD have been tampered with while the evacuations were going on. They weren’t. But that is the argument the GOP will make to prevent recounts.”

He elaborated in his subsequent letter to Harris: 

Lastly, this hack methodology may or may not have some correlation with the series of bomb threats called in by Russian-affiliated assets. The use of distraction or diversion of this kind is common. My first thought was, and my thinking remains, these bomb threats were called into tabulation centers and precincts where the hackers had already planned to conduct ghost bullet ballot introductions. I believe they wanted a disruption in the chain of custody, so lawyers could claim after the hacking events that the chain of custody on the ballots was flawed. The creation of the false-argument of a broken custody chain would be used as a pretext to prevent hand recounting, as hand recounting would not match the Trump favorable result. However, by a reverse of that logic, any jurisdiction which was subject to a bomb threat was forced to break standard operating procedure. This alone should be grounds for you to ask for a hand recount.

As of Nov. 21, Spoonamore’s claim that the bomb threats were part of a hacking and fraud scheme, like his claim that Musk was involved in the alleged fraud, remains unsupported by concrete evidence.

In our unanswered email to Spoonamore, we asked him about his assertions involving North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, confronted him with the numbers we gathered from the latest election results, and asked him whether he believed his initial analysis lacked validity. We also asked if he could share any documentary evidence that hacking took place. We will update this story if any further details come our way.

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