Some of billionaire Elon Musk‘s efforts to support former President Donald Trump‘s 2024 presidential election campaign could be backfiring, analysts say.
A legal contributor suggested initiatives by Musk’s America political action committee (PAC) could be capitalized on by Democratic Party supporters, while an exclusive report from The Guardian claimed that the committee falsely claimed to have visited potential voters’ homes.
On Saturday, Musk announced on X (formerly Twitter), that the Musk’s America would be giving away $1 million every day until November 5 to “someone in swing states who signed our petition to support free speech and the right to bear arms.”
Musk linked to America PAC, an organization he founded in support of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Elon Musk at a campaign rally for Donald Trump on October 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. An analyst has suggested Musk’s efforts to drum up support for Trump via petition could be capitalized on by Democratic Party supporters.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Katie Phang, a legal contributor and correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC questioned the move, asking: “So if a whole bunch of Democrats sign Elon’s petition, then he could end up paying them $1 million dollars and then those winners end up voting for Kamala Harris?”
Several comments on Phang’s post also pointed out that one could theoretically sign the petition, then donate the money to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
While federal law dictates that paying individuals to vote or accepting payment for voter registration or voting is an offense, compensating people for signing petitions or for convincing others to sign petitions is not against the law.
Meanwhile, The Guardian found that approximately a quarter of the results in the key swing states of Arizona and Nevada were flagged as “unusual survey logs” by canvassing app Campaign Sidekick.
In Arizona, 8,511 of the 35,692 surveyed by Blitz Canvassing in the America PAC operation were highlighted as unusual on Wednesday, The Guardian‘s report said. In Nevada, 21.2 percent were classified as “unusual survey logs” on October 15, a figure which rose to 30.1 percent two days later, though the PAC denied it was experiencing any level of fraud in the two states.
“Sidekick was never expected to handle the auditing of America PAC’s door operation. The reason the PAC is confident in its numbers is because of the auditing procedures each canvassing firm puts in place and the auditing procedures of the PAC writ large,” a person familiar with the America PAC operation said,” per The Guardian.
Some of Musk’s efforts have also raised legal questions, according to reports that Newsweek was unable to independently verify, which claimed that a pro-Trump network tied to Musk was behind a fake pre-Harris campaign plan.
An OpenSecrets report linked Progress 2028 which according to the report purports to be Kamala Harris’ liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to the Building America’s Future, which reportedly received funding from Musk.
Newsweek contacted the Trump campaign via email and Musk via X’s press email outside of regular working hours on Sunday.
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