Elon Musk is walking back part of his legally questionable plan to pay conservative voters.
During the presidential election, Mr. Musk courted conservative-leaning voters by offering $1 million payouts in a sweepstakes to those who agreed to sign a petition. Federal law prohibits payments to Americans in exchange for their registering to vote or casting ballots. Mr. Musk’s allies argued that he was not doing that, but merely paying people who signed a petition.
Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, has returned to the tactic as he tries to elect a conservative judge, Brad Schimel, in a major race for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The billionaire has offered a chance to earn $1 million to signers of a petition opposing “activist judges.”
Early Friday, Mr. Musk took it a big step further: He told his 219 million followers on X that when he visited Wisconsin on Sunday, he would hand out two $1 million checks to people who had already voted in the election “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.” The offer was open only to those who had already voted, he said.
But later on Friday, Mr. Musk quietly deleted his post on X.
About 12 hours after that initial post, he said he had to “clarify a previous post.” He wrote that “entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges,” adding, “I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition.”
Mr. Musk, whose shoot-from-the-hip approach on his social media site has gotten him in plenty of legal trouble over the years, appeared to be bowing to the legal scrutiny that was building on Friday.
It is Wisconsin law, not federal law, that applies, and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, on Friday sued to block Mr. Musk’s payments. (In a curious twist of fate, the case was randomly assigned to Susan Crawford, the liberal judge whom Mr. Musk is trying to defeat. She quickly recused herself.)
Several experts argued before Mr. Musk’s deletion of his post that his new inducement, which seemed to condition the chance of winning $1 million on voting, was illegal under state bribery laws.
“Conditioning entrance to this event and eligibility for the $1 million payout on having voted arguably violates Wisconsin law, which prohibits offering or giving anything of value to induce a person to vote,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer who has defended the legality of some of Mr. Musk’s petition payouts.
Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said that Mr. Musk’s original offer was “pretty clearly” a violation of state bribery laws. While Mr. Musk’s offer before the November 2024 election was a “gray area,” Ms. Godar said, “the key difference here is that the rally and the million-dollar payments are limited to people who have already voted.”
Part of the reason for Mr. Musk’s petition and payouts has been to gin up controversy and attention from the news media. His 2024 petition was challenged in Pennsylvania state court just before Election Day, and a state judge declined to put a stop to it.
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