Jen Golbeck∕SOPA/Zuma
In the days leading up to the election, the firehose of lies, half–truths, dumb memes, inflammatory political claims, and private obsessions emanating from Elon Musk’s Twitter account has grown ever more pressurized, with the world’s richest man posting in a frenzied effort to elect Donald Trump.
Musk’s own attempts to sway the election are drawing legal scrutiny.
Musk has returned to a set of ideas he’s been preoccupied with for much of the year: the threat of voter fraud, the necessity of voter ID laws, and his persistent concern that “non-citizens” will somehow vote. The timing of this push to build outrage over alleged illegal election activity might strike some observers as ironic, given that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office has just sued Musk for running his own “illegal…scheme” to entice conservative leaning voters with the prospect of cash.
The lawsuit follows Musk’s unveiling of two election-related cash giveaways, both through America PAC, the super PAC he recently created to support Trump. First, he promised to pay $100 to registered voters in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who sign a petition supporting free speech and the right to bear arms. Second, he committed to select one registered voter who signs the petition each day to receive $1 million.
While exchanging money for votes is illegal, it’s safe to say that Musk and his lawyers intended to design a system that sidesteps such restrictions. But on Monday, Philadelphia’s DA Larry Krasner filed a civil suit against Musk calling the giveaway an “unlawful lottery.” Musk and America PAC haven’t responded publicly to the suit, and awarded another million dollar winner in North Carolina on Monday.
At the same time Musk’s own actions to sway the election are drawing legal scrutiny, he has been tweeting intently about supposed illegal voter fraud. Musk posted on X many times throughout October that voter ID “should be required nationwide” and claiming that “almost every country on Earth” requires it. On Wednesday, for instance, he proclaimed that new voter ID requirements “should be implemented.” (Thirty-six states already have some form of voter ID law on the books. But those laws have been found to disproportionately disenfranchise elderly, poor and non-white voters, and to be an ineffective means of reducing fraud. What’s more, concerns about voter fraud can lead to the suppression and disenfranchisement of qualified voters.)
On Wednesday, Musk also tweeted in support of Virginia winning a Supreme Court ruling allowing it to remove alleged non-citizen voters from the polls, calling it “insane” that the “Democratic party”—which he put in scornful scare quotes—“was suing to allow non-citizens to vote.” In fact, legal opposition to the move came from Justice Department lawyers and civil rights groups, who argued eligible voters were at risk of erroneously being kicked off the rolls.
As Musk continues making unfounded claims of voter fraud, X has established an “Election Integrity Community,” a crowd-generated feed sharing usually-unverified claims, reports, and complaints of purported election malfeasance. In all, Musk seems intent on using his megaphone to depict the United States as rife with a certain kind of fraud committed by a certain kind of illegal, non-citizen voter. The irony of Musk’s obsession with the issue is rich, given that he worked illegally in the U.S. while launching his first company. While Musk has since claimed he had a student visa allowing him to work, in a 2013 joint interview, his brother Kimbal described them both as “illegal immigrants.”
