Musk offers a million dollars in a trick draw – DW – 10/21/2024

At first glance, the offer is harmless. This is a common marketing strategy. Online: Register on the website to access a great financial prize. But billionaire Elon Musk’s offer has a catch.

What is Musk doing and what is the problem?

The reward is very high. The richest man in the world wants to give away a million dollars a day until election day. To be more precise, what you want is to get around it. Since July, Musk has already invested about $75 million in “America PAC,” which aims to help Republican Donald Trump return to the White House. Officially raffled money comes from this fund.

Over the weekend, Musk personally delivered the first two checks at campaign events in Pennsylvania. The problem is that when registering on the website, the user must not only answer the questions of a harmless survey, but also sign a political petition before this Monday (10/21/2024).

It is a text that upholds the first two amendments to the US Constitution, which guarantee freedom of speech and the rights to bear arms. At first sight, a compromise with the two sections of the Constitution is harmless. But in the current American political landscape, extremists have hijacked the Second Amendment, which has been used to torpedo efforts to tighten gun laws.

To be eligible for the drawing, participants must be registered voters for the November 5 election and live in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. These seven are precisely the so-called “swing states” in which the presidential race is still fully open.

It will decide whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris will win the presidential election. That is why both the parties are trying hard to win votes in those states. In Pennsylvania, Musk wants to bypass the lottery and pay $100 for every registered voter who signs a petition.

Is Musk’s Strategy Illegal?

US legal experts are debating whether Musk’s strategy is illegal. Rick Hassan, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, published an article on his blog in which it was clear that Musk was “illegally buying votes.”

Brendan Fisher, an attorney specializing in campaign finance, said of the borderline legal case: “If every signer of the petition who resides in Pennsylvania is entitled to the benefits, there would be little doubt about the legality,” the AP news agency quoted Fisher as saying. . “But making payments with voter registration may be against the law,” concludes the expert.

For its part, the conservative tabloid “New York PostFormer Electoral Commissioner Bradley Smith says: “I don’t think people are paying to register to vote (…) Most of the bonuses go to people who have already registered.”

Pennsylvania’s governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, has already publicly asked law enforcement to open an investigation. “I’m no longer the attorney general of Pennsylvania, I’m the governor, but this raises serious questions,” Shapiro said on NBC.

What is an “America PAC”?

Elon Musk puts his face in the millionaire draw, but, officially, behind him is the pressure group “America PAC”, a common abbreviation for “political action group” in the US.

There are many PACs that represent different interests and support certain Republican or Democratic candidates. Direct donations to candidates and parties are limited, but PACs can organize their own advertising campaigns without restrictions.

Elon Musk founded “America PAC” in July to help Donald Trump win the election, in which he has already invested $75 million. According to a report by Reuters news agency, Musk was the only person to donate during the period from July to September.

What happens to the data?

It remains to be seen what information users will be required to provide when registering to participate in the draw. Voter databases are a valuable resource in American election campaigns: addresses, age distributions, and demographic information are used to develop detailed plans for which demographic groups each message should target.

Sometimes groups of people classified as unconditional supporters also receive requests for donations. From this perspective, the lottery’s online registration could provide the Trump camp with valuable information from the seven swing states.

(ms/ers)