(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk’s super political action committee, America PAC, is awarding a daily prize of $1 million to a registered voter in a swing state, the latest effort by the world’s richest person to help get Donald Trump back in the White House. Photographs of Musk handing winners over-sized checks adds yet another plot twist to the US presidential race between the Republican former president and his opponent, Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, which is already among the most dramatic in the country’s history.
How does Elon Musk’s giveaway work?
Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC is giving away $1 million every day until Election Day on Nov. 5 to a randomly selected signatory of a petition calling for free speech and the right to bear arms. The winner must be a registered voter.
Musk announced the sweepstakes on Oct. 20 on X, the social platform he owns and uses to promote Trump’s candidacy as well as election conspiracy theories about voter fraud and undocumented immigrants. Musk has 202 million followers on X and his posts have had hundreds of millions of combined views. The contest doesn’t specify which candidate voters should cast their ballots for.
On Oct. 17, Musk also announced on X a five-day window in which registered Pennsylvania voters — and whoever referred them to register — will get $100 each for signing the free-speech and gun-rights petition (an increase from his earlier offer of $47 per referral). Citizens of the other swing states were still eligible for the $47 payment.
The Trump campaign has also blasted out text messages saying that Musk will temporarily match smaller donations. The offer’s fine print says Musk will match contributions by donating to the Trump 47 Committee, which raises money for the former president’s campaign and the Republican Party and can accept donations up to $924,600. Donation matching is a common gimmick used by both parties to entice small-dollar donors to open their wallets, usually with no explanation of the source of the matching funds.
Is Elon Musk’s $1 million giveaway legal?
The answer to that question remains unclear. What is clear is that federal law prohibits paying people to register to vote. What’s murkier is whether paying $100 to people who sign a petition — but only if they’re registered to vote — qualifies as a violation of election law. The $1 million daily prize to randomly selected signatories of the petition has the same issue.
Few if any prosecutions have tested the federal law in such a manner, according to Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the nonpartisan Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program. The underlying issue is that the sweepstakes and petition are both offering financial incentive for registration, he says.
The contest immediately riled Democrats, who have vowed to take legal action as they vie for any remaining undecided voters in decisive states. Harris, asked about the Musk sweepstakes on the campaign trail on Oct. 21, indicated that the effort might draw legal scrutiny. “I think people are looking into that,” she said. But pressed on whether that meant the US government was investigating the matter, Harris said she was simply referring to media reports on the possible issues raised by the contest.
How might the contest violate election law?
The fact that Musk’s offer was contingent on proof of voter registration will be an issue, according to Adam Bonin, an election law attorney in Philadelphia who is working with Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party.
That said, state election laws add some complexity here; each state has its own rules that Musk’s contest may or may not violate. For example, Pennsylvania’s version of the law specifically refers to inducing someone to vote for a particular candidate or issue, so it may not be applicable.
Yet even if a state law isn’t explicit when it comes to paying for voter registration, federal law is. And Musk’s sweepstakes could trigger civil and criminal violations at a federal level, according to Adav Noti, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “It is illegal to give out money on the condition that recipients register as voters,” Noti said in a statement. “As the terms of this ‘contest’ to win $1 million require the recipient to be a registered voter in one of seven swing states (or to register if they have not already), the offer violates federal law and is subject to civil or criminal enforcement by the Department of Justice.”
Could Musk have found a loophole?
That remains to be determined. The contest is carefully structured to focus on people who sign the petition, even if participants must be registered voters. And Musk isn’t asking people to commit to vote or register in return for the payments, according to Kate Belinski, a partner at law firm Ballard Spahr.
Instead, Musk is asking registered voters in battleground states to pledge to support the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution, language that doesn’t violate the statute that bars paying people to vote or register to vote. America PAC’s website says it’s already made two payments of $1 million to two Pennsylvanians for signing the petition.
“It’s not legal to offer money to register to vote,” said Matthew Haverstick, a political law attorney at Kleinbard LLC in Philadelphia who has represented Republicans in the state. “But that’s not what this is. It’s an offer to people who are registered to vote, and that includes people already registered.” Because the money is theoretically being offered to people regardless of whether they registered to participate in the contest or did so 30 years ago, the payouts can’t be seen as an incentive to fill out the paperwork to cast a ballot.
Could Musk’s contest violate sweepstakes law?
Musk’s promotions do not appear to obviously violate state or federal regulations around sweepstakes or contests, according to Andrew Lustigman, a New York-based lawyer who specializes in such laws. That’s because Musk’s participants don’t have to buy anything or pay for a chance to win a prize.
Only government-sponsored sweepstakes and contests such as state lotteries are permitted to require payment for a chance to win. Companies that ask customers to purchase a product for a chance to win can get around the provision with fine print explaining how participants can join the contest for free.
Companies and individuals who run contests for prizes can still violate the law if they require so-called non-monetary consideration for a chance to win a prize — by requiring participants to do something that amounts to an undue burden on their time, for example, or handing over something significant, such as highly personal information.
Requiring participants to register to vote or even refer other voters to register could possibly be considered a non-monetary consideration, but that “doesn’t strike me as being a significant burden,” said Lustigman.
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--With assistance from Katanga Johnson and Dana Hull.
(Updates to include donation matching.)
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