SpaceX founder and billionaire Elon Musk’s pledge to give someone $1 million (£766,000) every day until the US election has been branded ‘deeply concerning’.
The randomly-chosen winner has to be a registered voter in a key state and to have signed Mr Musk’s online petition.
The money, however, does not come from his own personal stash, but through America PAC, the Donald Trump allied political action committee Mr Musk co-founded.
In a post on X, owned by Mr Musk, a video reveals the moment where the first winner was awarded on Saturday night at a town hall event in Pennsylvania.
Mr Musk said: ‘We are going to be awarding $1m randomly to people who have signed the petition.
‘One of the challenges we’re having is how do we get people to know about this petition because the legacy media won’t report on it.’
He added: ‘I figured, so how do we get people to know about it? Well, this news, I think will really fly. So every day between now and the election we will be awarding $1m, starting tonight.’
Another cheque was handed out on Sunday.
The petition asks for people to pledge their support for the first and second amendments – which support free speech and gun rights – and sees people asked for their contact details.
The petition also offers $100 to each registered Pennsylvania voter who signs and $100 for referring a registered Pennsylvania voter to sign.
To be eligible for any of the monetary rewards, signers will need to be registered in key battleground states Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Those who were at Saturday’s town hall events also had to sign the petition to attend.
Mr Musk’s promise immediately drew scrutiny from election law experts who said the offer is illegal.
Federal law states that anyone who ‘pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting’ faces a potential $10,000 fine or a five-year prison sentence.
The law also covers anything of monetary value, like liquor or lottery chances.
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who supports Kamala Harris, called Mr Musk’s offer ‘deeply concerning’ and has called for law enforcement to investigate the billionaire.
Speaking to CNN, Derek Muller, an election law expert who teaches at Notre Dame Law School, said: ‘When you start limiting prizes or giveaways to only registered voters or only people who have voted, that’s where bribery concerns arise.
‘By limiting a giveaway only to registered voters, it looks like you’re giving cash for voter registration.’
He added that most states make it a crime to pay people to vote.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) law school, wrote in a blog post that Musk’s offer was ‘clearly illegal vote-buying’ and pointed out that the Justice Department’s election crimes manual specifically says it’s illegal to offer ‘lottery chances’ that are ‘intended to induce or reward’ actions such as voter registration.
has contacted America PAC for a comment.
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