Elon Musk's million-dollar petition raises legal questions

Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX and Tesla and one of the richest people on Earth, handed out the first million-dollar cheque on Saturday during an election rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital. One of the participants received the money at the event. The billionaire announced that similar cheques will be given daily until election day on November 5th to registered voters who sign his petition concerning "constitutional rights" and the right to bear arms. This is one of the billionaire's ways to encourage as many Trump supporters as possible to register and vote in the elections.

For months, Musk has been actively campaigning for votes for Donald Trump. On his platform X (formerly Twitter), he spreads conspiracy theories about the Democratic candidate. In the final stages of the election campaign, he relocated to Pennsylvania to work from there for a high turnout of Trump supporters in the elections.

The aforementioned petition is available to voters in seven key states that will decide the outcome of the presidential elections. So far, each voter who signed it would receive $47 for their signature and any others they encouraged to sign. The exception is Pennsylvania, considered the most crucial state in the presidential election, where Musk is currently spending most of his time – there until Monday, the amount was $100.

Musk's involvement in the election campaign is raising enormous controversy. Commentators accuse the Trump-supporting Tesla chief of trying to buy votes for his candidate. Concerns about the legality of the process were raised on Sunday by Pennsylvania's governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, who, during an interview on NBC, stated that what Musk is doing is "deeply troubling" and should be looked into by the prosecutors. Federal law prohibits offering money to voters to persuade them to vote.

However, Musk's petition is theoretically available to all voters, and the payment is not contingent on their voting in the election.

- I signed it because I need the cash and I want to spite Musk - said Heather, a voter from Erie, Pennsylvania, who has already voted - by mail - for Kamala Harris.

She stated that she expects her information to be entered by Republicans into voter lists used in election campaigns, but she announced that she would block emails and SMS messages sent to her by Trump's campaign team.

Musk's petition is not the only one of his controversial and legally questionable electoral initiatives.

As reported by the media in recent days, the committees funded by Musk are behind election advertisements targeting Muslims in Michigan and Jews in Pennsylvania. The advertisements aimed at Muslims highlight the pro-Israel sympathies of Harris and her husband (who is Jewish), while those targeting Jews accuse her of being pro-Palestinian. The OpenSecrets portal also reported that Musk is behind a campaign of SMS and email messages to voters posing as Harris’s campaign team and presenting false claims about her campaign, such as allowing children to change gender at school without parental knowledge.

According to official data from the Federal Election Commission, Musk has donated $75 million to his main electoral committee, America PAC. However, as the "New York Times " states, Trump himself has told his supporters that the billionaire's support reaches $500 million.

Besides financial support and using the X platform to campaign for the former president, Musk has also started appearing at rallies supporting Trump. During Saturday’s rally in Harrisburg, he propagated a well-known MAGA (a community of Trump's most loyal voters) conspiracy theory that Democrats are sending illegal immigrants to key states to vote in elections. He also claims that the Dominion voting machines rigged the 2020 election results. This lie has been unequivocally debunked in recent years.