Stella Parton called for Elon Musk to die after claiming her Tennessee ballot defaulted to Marsha Blackburn three times, as state officials report just one similar complaint.
The 77-year-old singer and younger sister of Dolly Parton posted the remarks on Facebook on Wednesday while early voting continued in the November midterms. She tied her anger to Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, and to what she cast as an attempt to rig the election.
Breitbart News reported the posts and the response from Tennessee election officials, who said safeguards already exist for voters to catch and fix selection errors before a ballot is cast.
Stella Parton did not limit herself to a policy disagreement. She named Musk directly and wished him dead.
In the Wednesday Facebook post 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 is a vocal Democrat. The post framed ordinary midterm voting as a fight against rigging and treated Musk as a central villain in that fight.
Parton said the posts came from fear and frustration as much as anger. In a follow-up she added:
“And we have people asking why we’re so angry. I’m more frightened and frustrated than angry.”
Another line read:
“This is so sad and heartbreaking but to think this is what it’s come to makes me angry for every good and innocent person in this country,”
Parton said she voted early last week at the Hermitage Library in Tennessee. She claimed the on-screen ballot kept defaulting to Republican Marsha Blackburn and that she had to correct the selection three times.
She wrote:
“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 that she would never vote for Blackburn “for anything” and urged others not to rush past problems at the polls.
“I’m putting this out here because when we vote, we take it seriously but we try not to hold up the long lines. Do it anyway. Don’t let them rig this election,” she posted.
Nothing in the available reporting shows that an incorrect ballot was finally cast. Parton’s own account describes corrections made before she finished. The technical cause of any default she saw is not established in the public record provided.
The Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office said it had received only one complaint like Parton’s among roughly 400,000 ballots cast so far in the November midterms. That figure was also reported by WSMV.
Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins told the Tennessean the systems are built to match voter intent.
“Tennessee’s voting systems are designed with multiple safeguards to help ensure that ballots are recorded consistent with voter intent,”
Officials described an initial selection screen, a final review screen, and a paper ballot or paper record that let voters check and fix errors. They encouraged anyone who believes there is a problem to alert a poll official immediately, before casting the ballot, so staff can correct it.
In short, the state says the process already includes multiple chances to catch a wrong selection. Parton’s public account is of a voter who used those chances three times. Election administrators say nearly identical complaints have been vanishingly rare in a half-million-ballot early window.
Dolly Parton, the 10-time Grammy winner and Stella’s sister, died of cancer in August, according to the same reporting. Stella Parton’s posts mixed personal grief language with the election claims and the attack on Musk. No response from Musk or from Blackburn appears in the material.
A celebrity turning a corrected ballot screen into a public death wish against a tech executive is a choice. Tennessee’s own numbers show voters and poll workers already have tools to protect intent. Extreme rhetoric does not improve those tools.
