Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk took his full-throated support of former president Donald Trump on the road last week, holding a series of town halls in Pennsylvania, the pivotal battleground state he once lived in as an undergraduate student. There, Musk unveiled a surprise promotion: a daily $1 million giveaway, eligible for registered voters in swing states who signed his super-PAC’s petition, which pledges support for the First and Second Amendments. Musk’s PAC has announced four individual winners since the giveaways first began, but on Wednesday, the PAC did not announce its latest chosen voter amid news that the organization received a warning from the federal government earlier this week.
The head of the Justice Department’s election-crimes bureau sent Musk’s America PAC a letter on Monday, cautioning that gifting $1 million to voters could potentially violate statutes that bar paying people to vote. As of Thursday morning, America PAC has continued to post on X, sharing clips of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s CNN town hall that aired Wednesday night as well as criticism of the White House’s handling of immigration. But it has not announced a new sweepstakes winner.
Musk promised registered voters in seven key battleground states would have a chance of winning the large sum by signing a petition pledging their support for the freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. America PAC has shared videos of the winners holding their oversize $1 million checks and discussing the PAC on its social-media account.
But legal experts have previously speculated that Musk’s giveaway announcement may run afoul of election law. In a blog post, election-law expert Rick Hasen cited a specific statute, 52 U.S.C. 10307(c), which states that a person who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
It remains to be seen if the pause is merely a temporary hiccup for Musk or a sign that the promotion has been halted for good.
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