By Robert Nowinski
Elon Musk has recently offered people in swing states $1 million to vote per day to sign his petition. According to Musk, he will “randomly award $1 million a day to registered voters who sign a petition for his pro-Trump political action committee in an effort to get his fans in swing states to the polls.” This will go on every day until the election.
The website itself states, “this program is exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina.” There has been much dispute over whether or not this is legal. It’s a crime by federal law to “pay or offer to pay or accept payment either for registration to vote or for voting.” The punishment is up to 5 years in prison. Most states make it a crime to pay people to vote.
This can be seen as a crime, but it all depends on the wording. If they say, “If I pay you x dollars, you will vote,” that’s illegal. But if they say something like, “Please vote for this and you can get x dollars if you want,” that is legal. So, if it’s worded a certain way, it will be allowed. According to Brad Smith—the Vice Chairman of Microsoft and an attorney—“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.” So far, he has been given warnings by the government, but no legal action has been taken.
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