SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Elon Musk’s bid to purchase Twitter came up short after 138,000 board votes were found at 2 a.m., a company spokesman confirmed Tuesday. Musk had been in talks to purchase the company for $44 billion.
“We really thought Musk was going to pull this one out,” said Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. “The yes votes had a strong lead when I went to bed last night, but that was before we counted all the mail-in votes that one of our employees found in locker 142 at the bus terminal.”
When the final votes were tallied, the takeover bid failed by a final tally of 10 votes for, 138,000 votes against. While the final result came as a shock to most observers, Agrawal said the election was fair. “Twitter takes election integrity very seriously,” he noted. “I can confidently say this was the most secure election in American history.”
A shocked Musk took to Twitter Tuesday to express his outrage. “Those ballots…that’s a whole big scam,” Musk tweeted. “The only way I could have lost if this was rigged! I refuse to accept the results of this vote!”
Musk later tweeted that he was planning a demonstration at Twitter headquarters on May 6 to protest the results. His account was then permanently suspended by Twitter for questioning the integrity of the election.