“The program works like this: Registered voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, or Wisconsin — all swing states that could go for either Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump come Election Day — can sign the petition, which claims to be a “Petition in Favor of Free Speech and the Right to Bear Arms” until Monday, October 21, which happens to be the voter registration deadline in Pennsylvania.
The petition is being circulated by Musk’s America PAC, which has taken over much of Trump’s ground operation in key swing states. Musk has made Pennsylvania a particular focus of his personal outreach, hosting events there, including one on Sunday where he handed a woman in a Trump-Vance shirt a giant $1 million check.
Though the petition does not require signers to be registered Republicans, the focus on the First and Second Amendments does seem to appeal to potential Trump voters who fear Democrats will take away their gun rights and who subscribe to Musk’s idea of “free speech.” The net effect, then, is that Musk is promising $1 million a day to a program aimed at getting pro-Trump voters registered in swing states.
Because his contest is only open to registered voters, there may be a case for it to be understood as an illegal financial incentive to get people to register to vote, as Public Citizen’s complaint alleges. One issue Musk faces, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, is that what constitutes payment for voting-related activity has been broadly interpreted in the past.
“This could involve anything of value,” Becker said. The law “has been applied to things like Ben & Jerry’s offering everyone who has an ‘I Voted’ sticker an ice cream cone on Election Day. They received a cease-and-desist letter and changed [the promotion to give] everyone a free ice cream cone on Election Day.”
There is some ambiguity in Musk’s promotion, compared to what Ben & Jerry’s offered, however. The uncertainty arises from the fact that Musk’s PAC is asking people to sign a petition for the chance to win $1 million, not explicitly rewarding them for registering to vote.
Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections & Government Program, told Vox that the issue at hand really comes down to whether entering a specific group of people in a lottery if they sign a petition counts as paying people to register to vote.”