Elon Musk's million-dollar election push sparks legal uproar

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

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

The petition is available to voters in seven key states that will influence the outcome of the presidential elections. So far, each voter who signed it would receive 47 dollars 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 - until Monday, the amount was 100 dollars.

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 investigated by the prosecutors. Federal law prohibits offering money to voters to influence their votes.

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

Musk's petition is not his only controversial and legally questionable electoral initiative.

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 dollars to his main electoral committee, the America PAC. However, according to the "New York Times," Trump told his supporters that the billionaire's support amounts to 500 million dollars.

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 manipulated the 2020 election results, a lie that has been unequivocally debunked in recent years.