Stella Parton called for Elon Musk to die after alleging her Tennessee ballot defaulted to Marsha Blackburn, a claim officials say is nearly unique among 400,000 votes.
The 77-year-old singer and younger sister of Dolly Parton posted on Facebook that people like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and “Russian bots” may upend another election, then added a blunt death wish. Breitbart News reported the remarks as early midterm voting continued in Tennessee.
Parton, a vocal Democrat, also said her early ballot at the Hermitage Library kept defaulting to Republican Marsha Blackburn and that she had to correct it three times. State election officials answered with hard numbers and a description of the safeguards already built into the process.
In the Wednesday Facebook post, Parton did not say much about Musk or the election.
She wrote:
"To think people like Elon Musk and Russian bots may be upended another election makes my skin crawl. May they all die and worms eat them,"
She tied the rhetoric to her own voting experience the week before.
Parton stated:
"In Tennessee last week at the Hermitage Library where I voted, I had to go back three times and correct my vote because it kept defaulting to Marsha Blackburn,"
She added she would never vote for Blackburn for anything, urged others not to “hold up the long lines,” and warned, “Don’t let them rig this election.”
Follow-up posts leaned on fear and frustration. Parton said she was “more frightened and frustrated than angry” and called the moment “sad and heartbreaking” while saying it made her “angry for every good and innocent person in this country.”
Tennessee’s Secretary of State’s Office put the claim in scale. Among roughly 400,000 ballots cast so far in the November midterms, the office said it had received only one complaint like Parton’s, according to a WSMV report cited in the coverage.
Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins addressed the design of the systems in a statement given to the Tennessean.
Goins said:
"Tennessee’s voting systems are designed with multiple safeguards to help ensure that ballots are recorded consistent with voter intent,"
The Secretary of State’s Office described those steps in plain terms. Voters see an initial selection screen, then a final review screen, and receive a paper ballot or paper record. Officials encouraged anyone who believes they found a problem to alert a poll worker immediately, before casting the ballot.
Parton’s post does not say whether she flagged a poll official at the Hermitage Library before finishing. The state figures show almost no one else reported the same default-to-Blackburn problem across hundreds of thousands of ballots.
Parton framed her posts as civic duty. She said she was speaking up because “when we vote, we take it seriously.” The same thread named Musk alongside “Russian bots,” accused outsiders of trying to rig the midterms, and closed with a wish that they die and that worms eat them.
Musk was identified in the reporting as SpaceX CEO. No statement from him appeared in the account. Blackburn was named only as the candidate Parton said the machine kept selecting. No equipment vendor, precinct log, or final cast-ballot image was produced in the coverage to test the default claim beyond Parton’s description and the state’s complaint count.
Early voting was already well underway. The official response stayed on process: verify on screen, review again, keep the paper record, and tell a poll worker at once if something looks wrong. Against that backdrop, a single celebrity complaint, and a death wish aimed at a private citizen active in politics, became the public story.
Voters who follow the rules deserve systems that record their choices and rhetoric that stays inside the bounds of civilized disagreement. Wishing death on political opponents is not accountability. It is a tell.
