QUID BRO QUO
Elon Musk’s $1 million daily giveaway to swing state voters is raising serious legal questions: The move “seems to collide with federal election law,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight committee, exclusively told What A Day.
- Billionaire conspiracy theorist Elon Musk spent the weekend handing out oversized, golf tournament-style $1 million checks to dazzled voters while barnstorming for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. It all started on Saturday, when Musk called a sweepstakes winner in a MAGA hat up to the stage and made him one million dollars richer, with the words: “So anyway, you’re welcome.” Musk’s America PAC plans to continue handing out $1 million every day until Election Day to one registered voter in a swing state, selected from those who sign the group’s petition in support of the First and Second Amendments (which concern free speech and access to guns, respectively). “I think this is kind of fun, and you know, it seems like a good use of money basically,” said Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth above $240 billion.
- Some election lawyers beg to differ. Federal law prohibits paying or offering to pay “for registration to vote or for voting.” That includes so-called “lottery chances” aimed at inducing or rewarding a certain behavior, such as voter registration, according to UCLA election law expert Rick Hasen, who published a blog post over the weekend calling the sweepstakes “clearly illegal vote buying.” Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who happens to be the former Attorney General of Pennsylvania, called for law enforcement to “take a look.”
- Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a longtime constitutional scholar and a legal heavyweight in Congress, slammed the giveaway in a phone call with What A Day this afternoon. “It definitely seems to collide with federal election law, which makes it a crime to pay people to register to vote,” Raskin said. “You can’t pay people to register, and the problem with that is perfectly demonstrated by this episode — because he is offering a financial inducement to people to register to vote from the perspective of a particular candidate in campaigning.” Musk’s America PAC didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Federal law treats lottery chances as a form of payment because each lottery chance has financial value to it, Raskin explained. “This is like passing out lottery tickets.”
- Not all campaign legal experts say Musk’s giveaway is over the line, however. Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, told the New York Times that he sees the move as “something of a gray area.” Smith continued: “He’s not paying them to register to vote. He’s paying them to sign a petition — and he wants only people who are registered to vote to sign the petition. So I think he comes out OK here.”
- Hasen flatly disagrees with Smith. “I think he’s totally wrong,” Hasen told What A Day, while noting that election law scholars have been debating the topic all day in a listserv. “What we would have is turning our elections into more like a bazaar, where people are not thinking like, ‘what’s best for me and the country.’ It’s like, ‘what’s good for my wallet.’”
- Should normal people go ahead and sign up for this in hopes of winning the big bucks? Hasen’s answer: Hell no! “I certainly wouldn’t sign up for it, because I know what the law is,” he said. “People who are listening to you now and hearing me speak: That would be a bad thing to do.” Got it!
Raskin warned that Musk’s attempt to buy Trump’s way into the White House is par for the course among Trump’s allies. “It’s consistent with the completely monetized pay-to-play, quid pro politics of the MAGA party,” he said.
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