Elon Musk has asked Twitter users to vote on whether to unban Donald Trump’s account (Picture: Getty)

Donald Trump could be set for a Twitter comeback after Elon Musk set up a poll to decide the matter.

The billionaire, who recently took over the platform, posted a yes/no vote on his own account asking whether the former president should be reinstated.

He was banned from the site in the wake of a violent insurrection at Capitol Hill following his defeat in the general election.

At time of writing and with four hours left to go, 52% had voted in favour of letting the ex-president have his account back.

More than 13 million have cast a vote so far.

Prior to his chaotic buyout of Twitter on October 27, Musk said in May that he would reverse the platform’s ‘foolish’ ban on Mr Trump if he ever took charge of the company.

‘Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots or spam, scam accounts. I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,’ he said.

Trump’s account was permanently banned from Twitter in January 2021 after he encouraged his supporters to storm Congress in Washington DC, which left several people dead.

The tech company said it made the decision to suspend his account after the January 6 riot ‘due to the risk of further incitement of violence’.

Other accounts which have had their suspensions lifted following Musk’s takeover include Jordan Peterson and satirical website The Babylon Bee, who were banned earlier this year for making transphobic remarks about actor Elliot Page and US politician Rachel Levine.

Comedian Kathy Griffin also had her ban lifted after being suspended for impersonating Musk, but refused his offer to return to the platform.

‘Dear Space Karen, no thanks’ she wrote on rival platform Mastodon.

Comedian Kathy Griffin declined Musk’s offer to return to Twitter after she was banned for impersonating his account (Picture: Mastodon)

Mr Musk has overseen a huge restructuring of the company, which has seen mass layoffs and a mass exodus of staff.

Earlier this week, he gave Twitter employees an ultimatum to either commit to the company’s new ‘hardcore’ work environment which required staffers to sign up for ‘long hours at high intensity’ or leave. 

However, many more workers declined to sign on than he expected, potentially putting Twitter’s operations at risk, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Out of an estimated 3,700 employees it is believed just 280 opted to remain at the company, leaving entire departments unstaffed and the site’s critical infrastructure prone to collapse at a moment’s notice.

Such was the scale of the exodus that Twitter was forced to close its offices until Monday as it became impossible to verify who still worked for the company.

With so much of Twitter’s workforce now gone, there is speculation that the site will crash during the World Cup, one of the site’s busiest traffic events.

Trump was banned from Twitter after he encouraged his supporters to stage a coup in Washington after his defeat in the 2020 Presidential election (Picture: Getty)

Twitter employees called Musk’s bluff after he asked them to pledge alleigience or be fired, staging a mass exodus that has reduced the company to a skeleton crew

In his first email to Twitter employees this month, Musk warned that Twitter may not be able to ‘survive the upcoming economic downturn.’

He also said, ‘We are also changing Twitter policy such that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception.’

Advertisers have deserted the site following Musk’s $44 billion takeover, with an anonymous source claiming the company was planning to shut down one of Twitter’s three main data centres to save costs.

This prompted calls for a possible national security review of Musk’s deal by the US government, who said they were ‘tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern’.

On Thursday, seven Democrats sent a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan, accusing Twitter of ‘serious, willful disregard for the safety and security of its users’ and alleged Musk had ‘taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform,’ since his takeover.

When asked to comment on the situation, US president Joe Biden said Mr Musk’s relationships with other countries were ‘worthy of being looked at’ after it was revealed representatives from the Saudi Royal Family had invested heavily in the deal.

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The ex-president’s account was blocked after the January 6 riot but millions have voted to let him have it back.