Elon Musk’s $1 million giveaway may not be legal

• Elon Musk is giving away $1 million each day to a voter who signs a petition.
• But there could be trouble, because you have to be a registered voter to participate.
• It’s illegal to pay people to register to vote, and experts say this could cross that line.

Elon Musk’s latest gambit to help elect former President Donald Trump may be illegal, according to election law experts.

The billionaire businessman announced at a rally in Harrisburg, PA on Saturday that he would award $1 million every day through his “America PAC” to a swing state voter who signs the super PAC’s petition affirming support for freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.

It’s just the latest turn in Musk’s growing involvement in the presidential race. The billionaire businessman has invested nearly $75 million into electing Trump and other Republicans, arguing that American democracy depends on the former president’s reelection.

In this instance, the problem may be that giveaway participants are required to be registered voters. According to the America PAC website, the giveaway program is “exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

It is illegal under federal law to pay people to register to vote, and the Department of Justice’s Election Crimes Manual also lists “lottery chances” in exchange for voting or registering to vote as a form of bribery.

If Musk ran afoul of the law, it would fall to the Justice Department to enforce it. Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School, said it would be surprising to see such an action so close to Election Day.

“Just as it is a pretty aggressive move on his part to do this, it would also be an aggressive move by the Department of Justice to do this,” Briffault, who studies campaign finance law, told Business Insider. “They could bring it after Election Day. I’m sure there is a time limit but the indictment, if there is one, is not limited to it being brought before Election Day.”

Briffault said Musk’s gambit may violate “the spirit of the law, but not the letter” of the law. “If this was just set up as ‘I’ll pay you to register to vote,’ that would be illegal,” he said.

But there’s ambiguity, Briffault said, because most of the participants have likely been on the voting rolls long before Musk even conceived of the giveaway. Briffault added that though Musk’s “clear intent was to incentivize” pro-Trump voters to register to vote, he “might be able to get away with” saying he’s not trying to do so.

Other election law experts also said that Musk is either barely toeing the line or has outright broken the law.

“It is illegal to give out money on the condition that recipients register as voters,” Adav Noti, the Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement to BI. “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.”

Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote on his blog that the giveaway constitutes “clearly illegal vote buying.”

A spokesman for Musk’s America PAC declined to comment.

Democrats have met Musk’s unusual gambit with a range of responses. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said on Sunday that the billionaire businessman’s spending raises “serious questions” and that it’s “something that law enforcement could take a look at.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Tim Walz said in an appearance on “The View” on Monday that he’d “let the lawyers decide” if what Musk is doing is legal, adding that the giveaways are what happens “when you have no economic plan that’s going to benefit the middle class.”