Musk butts up against Wisconsin state law with (now deleted) $1 million check giveaway [View all]
Source: Politico
Elon Musk will visit Wisconsin on Sunday ahead of the state’s high-profile Supreme Court election.
Musk initially announced the plan in a post shortly after midnight on Friday, promising a $1 million giveaway to two attendees who had voted. That post was deleted after legal experts raised concerns it would violate state law. Musk clarified on Friday afternoon that the giveaways would be limited to people who signed his super PAC’s petition.
-snip-
Legal experts immediately raised concerns that offering the Sunday giveaway for only those who have already voted could violate Wisconsin’s election bribery law, which makes it a crime to offer “anything of value” to “induce” potential voters to vote or not vote in an election. Early voting is underway in Wisconsin and runs through Sunday.
“I’m actually surprised that Musk is being so explicit about tying eligibility for this million dollar payout to having voted in the election,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer and deputy executive director of the watchdog organization Documented, about Musk’s earlier post. “His tweet makes it very clear that you can only enter this event, and you can only be eligible for the million dollar payout, if you voted, and it’s hard to read that as anything other than providing a thing of value to induce a person to vote, or to reward them for having voted.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/28/elon-musk-wisconsin-supreme-court-giveaway-00257082
Earlier thread in GD about MeidasTouch messages on this:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220185418
= new reply since forum marked as read