The money was for a petition, so I still dont see what the problem is unless its because hes using PAC money specifically.
Musk is a tool regardless and a Drumpf simp
He’s incentivizing voter registration by making cash payments and a lottery contingent on being a registered voter. Adding a trivial requirement of signing a petition (a petition which doesn’t function as a petition since they aren’t publicly sharing the signatures) doesn’t change the fact that it’s illegally incentivizing registration. If I promise to pay anyone that votes for my candidate of choice and also sings I’m a little teapot for me, I haven’t sidestepped the law. Musk is doing the same thing, he’s just putting the petition requirement front and center in the hope that framing it that way will make people think it’s legal.
If it was a nonbinding pledge to vote or to register to vote, that would be different. There’d still be all the rules that govern lotteries which could cause legal issues, but it wouldn’t actually cross the line into paying people for being registered voters.
Legal Eagle did a great video on this (where he also acknowledged it likely applys to the cards against humanity “joke” too).
If you actually care about the law and aren’t just shilling for a fascist whose entire empire is built on daddy’s slave mines I recommend watching that. There is a lot more nuance but there is very much precedent against this kind of stuff… that likely won’t be acted on.
The problem is that the premise is a vote buying scheme.
To win the $1 million prize, people must sign a petition affirming their support for the rights to free speech and bear arms. However, the fine print on the super PAC’s website specifies that only registered voters in seven battleground states are eligible to sign the petition – which experts said is the crux of the potential illegality.
Must be registered to participate means some people will register so that they can participate.
But yet it is fully illegal in some states to provide water to folks waiting in line to vote because it “can be considered” as a method of “buying votes”. People can be standing in direct sun for 4+ hours with no coverage or protection from the elements.
Welcome to America. Leave while you still can.
It specifically requires that participants (who will inherently be pro-trump) be registered voters and was announced before the registration cut off date. It’s not exactly a leap to come to the conclusion that this is buying Republican voter registration.
Would it have been fine if it’d been after the date?
I thought requiring being registered was itself a problem?
And if there’s one thing we learned from the Cards Against Humanity thing, the information regarding registration is available to PACs. They can check up on you to make sure you really have registered.
And although the petition (as far as I know) doesn’t ask for your party designation, I know a lot of Democrats who would willingly sign a plesde to protect the first and second amendments. But, the PACs can get access to your registered party, too. And do you really want to be giving your name and address to a bunch of people who consider you the “enemy of the state”?
Federal law makes it a crime for anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.”
Musk’s little lottery is shitting on the spirit of that law at best and is in violation of it at worst. AFAIK, that’s why the DOJ issued a warning rather than something legally stronger.
spirit of that law
The SCOTUS only cares about that when it enables them to pull some serious bullshit out of their ass. Otherwise they’re strict textualists and will say “It WaS a PeTiTiOn, FulLy LeGal AnD cOoL!” So they’ll be sure to step in and stop any action from being taken.
