The same progressive academics who brought us the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law have their underwear in a twist over Elon Musk’s advocacy of free speech. Yesterday, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, who was elected with the help of left-wing financier George Soros, announced he is suing Musk.
“Musk must be stopped, immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election,” Krasner argues in his suit. “That is because America PAC and Musk hatched their illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in that election.”
Musk must explain to a local court why he believes Krasner’s request for the lottery to be stopped is wrong.
The U.S. Justice Department has also warned Musk, saying that he may be in violation of federal law for having his America PAC conduct a million-dollar lottery for registered voters who sign his “Petition in Favor of Free Speech and the Rights to Bear Arms.”
The petition asks the signer to agree that the “First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.” Each day, one individual who signs the petition in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, or North Carolina is to be awarded $1 million. Each signer can earn $47 for each registered voter they get to also sign the petition.
The only people eligible to win the lottery or collect the bonus are those who are already registered voters. That means that Musk is NOT paying individuals to register to vote. He is paying them to sign the petition.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former member of the Federal Election Commission, says Musk is clearly not violating the federal statute that makes it a felony violation for anyone who “knowingly and willfully . . . pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.”
Von Spakovsky says that what Musk is doing isn’t different from what pollsters, political consultants, and campaigns routinely do every election with focus groups:
They convene a group of registered voters—who are paid for their involvement—to ask them questions about candidates and issues. It is normally a condition that you are a registered voter to be eligible to participate in the focus group and get paid for spouting your opinion. . . . The bottom line? No objective, nonpartisan, rational federal prosecutor would take up this case.
The highly partisan prosecutors and academics who are howling over Musk’s move will ultimately have to admit that the world’s richest man has clearly hired very smart lawyers and designed a perfectly legal lottery to increase voter turnout. What his opponents are really mad about is that the people Musk is turning out to vote support the First and Second Amendments, which they clearly do not.