Elon Musk has been saying that voting by mail is "insane" and opens the way to election fraud, but his voting records show he has also mailed in his ballots in past elections.
Records obtained by NBC News through a public records request to the state of California show the billionaire voted by mail in November 2016, the year now-GOP nominee Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, and again two years later in the 2018 midterm election.
Other reports indicate he has also voted by mail in Texas, where he moved in 2020.
Musk didn't vote often when he lived in California, the state records show. In the 18 years he was eligible to vote, he only cast ballots in the 2016 and 2018 elections.
He first became eligible to vote in 2002, when he became a U.S. citizen, but didn't cast his first ballot until the 2016 election, although he was registered to vote in August 2006.
The California secretary of state's office initially declined the request for Musk's records, saying it does not provide records for registrations that have been canceled, but then reversed its decision.
Musk canceled his voter registration in California in August 2020, and announced that December that he had moved to Texas.
The Daily Beast has reported that Musk voted by absentee ballot in 2020 after moving to Texas. The site added that he voted in Texas in June 2022 but not that November.
Musk is registered to vote in Brownsville, Texas, where one of his companies, SpaceX has operations. As of December, Musk has lived in Austin, according to court records, reports Business Insider.
NBC sought comment from Musk about his voting history and statements about mail-in ballots, and he did not address his record but stood by what he said about mail-in ballots.
"Voting by mail has been recognized as an invitation to fraud throughout the world," he said in an email.
Musk, who has come out as a strong Trump supporter, has criticized mail-in voting several times on his X app, often adding criticisms containing partially false claims about casting ballots.
"In the USA, you don't need a government-issued ID to vote and you can mail in your ballot. This is insane," he wrote in January.
Voter registration forms ask applicants for ID numbers, usually requiring a driver's license or state identification number, or a Social Security number.
Musk also claimed in May that widespread voting by mail wasn't allowed before the COVID-19 pandemic, which he referred to as the "scamdemic."
But in November 2018, when Musk cast his mail-in ballot, 65% of ballots in California were cast through the mail, according to state records. In the election two years before, 58% of the ballots in the state were mailed in.
Now, California sends all registered voters ballots in advance, so they can deliver them by hand or mail them in.
Meanwhile, Musk's political action committee, America PAC, has been encouraging swing state voters to vote by mail.
NBC News obtained a mailer from the PAC that had been distributed in Wisconsin, which included a QR code that linked to the organization's website and said to "scan here to apply for your absentee ballot."