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Musk Awards Third Million-Dollar Petition Prize Amid Claims Of Illegality

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
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The Elon Musk-funded America PAC on Monday dished out its third, daily, million-dollar prize to randomly-selected participants in the group's petition drive, as allegations of the scheme's illegality continued to erupt from triggered leftists.  

Via Musk's social media platform, America PAC announced that Shannon Tomei, who lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKees Rocks, is the latest winner of $1 million. She follows Harrisburg's John Dreher and Pittsburgh's Kristine Fishell as winners in Musk's highly attention-getting incentive scheme to bolstering petition participation -- and build a list of names for the PAC to exploit in the run-up to Election Day. Until then, the PAC will be awarding $1 million per day to a randomly-selected petition-signer from a swing state. 

The online petition simply reads, "The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments." That's short and to the point -- perhaps because the petition per se isn't really the point at all. Rather, the aim seems to be building a get-out-the-vote list and indirectly encouraging voter registration of right-leaning Americans.   

The million-dollar giveaways add fireworks to a program that already offered participants a chance to make easy money with no element of luck involved: Through Monday Oct. 21, America PAC was paying $47 to anyone who refers a registered, swing-state voter to sign a petition. Those swing states are Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. In a sweetener that also expired Monday night, signers in uber-battleground Pennsylvania and those who referred them were all earning $100 each. While the paid petition-recruitment is over for now, the million-dollar giveaways for swing-state signers keeps going until Nov. 5.  

In addition to the campaign fireworks, the promotion has also sparked a barrage of accusations that Musk and his PAC are violating a federal law that makes it a crime to pay someone to register to vote or to vote. Classifying those acts as a form of bribery, the law subjects offenders to penalties of up to $10,000 and five years in prison. "Lottery chances" are listed in the list of prohibitions.  

Critically, the America PAC program merely paid people for referring registered voters to sign a petition, and the million-dollar prizes are awarded to random, registered petition-signers. That said, while there's no direct reward for registration, there's clearly an indirect incentive. That's apparently enough to get Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to try siccing the police on Musk. “I think it's something that law enforcement could take a look at," he told Meet the Press. "I'm not the attorney general anymore of Pennsylvania. I'm the governor, but it does raise some serious questions.”

Most objective thinkers would say the program lies in a gray area at worst, but at least one election law expert is unequivocally calling it a crime. At his blog, UCLA Professor Richard Hasen declared, "Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal."

Stopping short of a verdict, campaign-finance lawyer Brendan Fischer told the New York Times the program raises alarms: 

“There would be few doubts about the legality if every Pennsylvania-based petition signer were eligible, but conditioning the payments on registration arguably violates the law, which prohibits giving anything of value to induce or reward a person for registering to vote.”

Other experts think the focus on the petition gives the PAC a margin of safety. Former Federal Election Commission chairman Brad Smith told the Times that America PAC is in “something of a gray area,” but “not that close to the line...He’s not paying them to register to vote. He’s paying them to sign a petition — and he wants only people who are registered to vote to sign the petition. So I think he comes out OK here.” 

Pennsylvania's voter registration window for 2024 closed at midnight last night, with the Republican Party the clear winner of the cycle. While registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans in the Keystone State, their lead has fallen from more 1.2 million in 2008 to below 300,000 today. You have to go back nearly 30 years to find such a narrow gap. 

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