Elon Musk’s financial contributions to increase voter turnout are being questioned by legal experts

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk raised the stakes this weekend to persuade more swing-state voters to support Donald Trump in next month’s presidential election. On Saturday, at a town hall in Harrisburg, Musk presented a check for $1 million to a lucky attendee who signed his online petition for the First and Second Amendments.

From now until the election, Musk claimed he would hand out a $1 million check every day to a randomly selected petition signer from one of seven states, including Pennsylvania. The Tesla and SpaceX founder held four town hall meetings in the battleground state last week and made stops in Delaware and Montgomery counties on Thursday and Friday ahead of Monday’s voter registration deadline.

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All month, Musk and his $75 million America PAC have sparked a legal debate over whether he is violating federal election law by offering amounts of money to people who sign his online petition. The effort began with a promise of $47 for registered voters who signed the petition and then recommended others to register to vote and sign the petition. America PAC later increased the amount to $100 and offered to send people checks just for signing the petition and nothing else.

Election law expert Richard L. Hasen of the UCLA School of Law was one of the first to raise the alarm about Musk’s voter registration tactics. Because Musk had offered money for signing a petition — not specifically for voting or registering to vote — Hasen said the monetary offers were “of unclear legality.”

Federal law classifies vote buying as a form of bribery when someone “pays, offers to pay, or accepts payment, either to register to vote or to vote.” Violators face a prison sentence of up to five years and a $10,000 fine.

Hasen said Musk’s $1 million raffle “clearly constitutes illegal vote buying” because of eligibility requirements that required the petition to be signed by the end of Monday. He and other election law experts have noted that this aligns with voter registration deadlines in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Musk’s town halls have advocated for early and mail-in voting, and the person who received the $1 million check in Harrisburg stood next to a sign that read “Vote Early.”

Musk himself said Saturday that the most important part of his message was to “register, register, register” ahead of government deadlines – an emphasis that caught some observers’ attention.

“Yes, there is an additional step in the process (signing the petition), but part of the monetary award depends on voter registration status,” Derek Muller of Notre Dame Law School told The Washington Post. “This is where the potential illegality comes into play; it’s starting to look like someone who “pays to register to vote.”

Hasen told NBC News that Musk ran a lottery exclusively for registered voters in swing states.

“They are creating a lottery where the only people eligible to participate in the lottery are those who are registered to vote or are registered to vote, and that is illegal,” he said.

Does money make people vote?

During a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called Musk’s payments “deeply troubling” and said law enforcement could potentially look into them. Formerly Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Shapiro suggested his successor, Michelle Henry, investigate America PAC’s activities in the state.

Henry’s office did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Henry is not running for re-election in the statewide contest for attorney general in November.

Robin Kolodny, a political science professor and campaign finance expert at Temple University, said Monday that any prosecution against Musk would have to be carried out by the U.S. Justice Department, whose criminal investigations take precedence over state matters and the civil investigations overseen by the federal Election Commission.

“The Justice Department is notoriously opaque.” said Kolodny. “What they would do and how they would go about it is almost impossible to predict, except I can tell you it would take years. It is unlikely there will be any immediate impact.”

Kolodny said that in building a case against Musk, the fine print of his petition would matter.

“If it doesn’t say, ‘I promise to vote for Donald Trump,’ then I’m not sure you can technically say he’s done buying votes,” she said.

Musk’s campaign on Trump’s behalf raises larger questions about whether giving away money is an effective strategy to increase voter registration and turnout. At his rally on Saturday, Musk said he hoped the petition would persuade 1 million to 2 million more voters in battleground states to vote.

Kolodny pointed to research by her colleague, Northeastern University political scientist Costas Panagopoulos, that suggests the average voter does not see money as a big political motivator for voting. Panagopoulos gave the people of California the opportunity to claim money just to vote in two elections in 2007 and 2010. The offers were made without favoring any candidate or party. Voters were sent postcards to take with them to the polls, validated after voting, and in most cases received between $5 and $25.

“Hardly anyone did it. Not even for the $25 if all you have to do is go to someone after voting,” Kolodny said. “It seemed clear that when he did a survey, people were put off by the idea that it was going to be transactional.”

While the study found that “non-trivial incentives” increased voter turnout, nominal amounts of money “failed to effectively increase voter turnout.” Musk’s $1 million checks will be paid out to fewer than 20 people by the Nov. 5 election.

Kolodny said America PAC was most likely distributing money to people who already planned to vote for Trump.

“Does (Musk) really think he’s going to get someone who’s undecided to say, ‘I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but for $100 I’ll do it?’ I wouldn’t bet on that at all,” she said. “I would bet that people who are already on every website that supports Trump would say, ‘I’ll do that, I might as well make money.'”

Additionally, Musk is putting his own reputation on the line to people who might write him off if they never end up receiving a $100 check in the mail. Kolodny said the chances of winning a million dollars playing Musk are probably about the same as playing the lottery.

“Who really bets that all this will come to pass?” said Kolodny. “Look at the fine print. I can’t imagine Musk actually having something that’s going to produce anything.”

“A contradictory kind of action”

Kolodny is co-author of a book (free to download) that aims to inform people about important developments in campaign finance law, how they shape our politics, and what types of reforms seem to work better than others.

Ahead of November’s election, Musk’s visibility is emblematic of headwinds that have more to do with celebrity influence than money.

“We’re in a time where Taylor Swift is saying, ‘I’m going to support someone.’ “It goes viral without her having to spend a dime, but it has value,” Kolodny said. “The bigger question is whether rich people trick politicians or voters into doing something they wouldn’t do anyway. That makes it more difficult.”

Celebrity endorsements and big spending by super PACs are not necessarily designed to sway the views of politicians whose views are likely already set. More often, supportive candidates can work to prioritize certain issues. For Musk, that could mean Trump putting his regulatory concerns about the auto industry and space at the top of his agenda in the White House, Kolodny said.

Musk’s willingness to give money indiscriminately to American voters may be at odds with the policies he and Trump espouse. Last month, Trump said he would put Musk in charge of a federal Department of Government Efficiency that would target wasteful spending.

“Trump is really going to make (Musk) the government’s director of waste ethics?” Kolodny said. “This is really a contradictory type of action.”

Unless there is substantial evidence that Musk and America PAC are violating the law, Kolodny believes the Justice Department is unlikely to devote significant resources to an investigation.

“What are you going to do now?” There are still 15 days until the election,” she said. “How exactly are you going to take this guy under control and get evidence that he did something that was essential to the election?”