Vote buying
Offering, promising, or providing money or anything of value to induce a specific electoral act -- voting a certain way, signing a petition, or similar. It matters because it substitutes payment for free political judgment.
2025 Events (1)
Elon Musk gave two Wisconsin voters $1 million checks two days before the 2025 state Supreme Court election
Two days before Wisconsin's April 1, 2025 state Supreme Court election, Elon Musk personally handed $1 million checks to two voters, Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler, at a Green Bay rally, after his political action committee America PAC designated them "spokesmen" for a petition opposing "activist judges." Musk and groups he funded spent more than $20 million backing conservative candidate Brad Schimel, who lost to Susan Crawford in the country's most expensive judicial election; Wisconsin's Attorney General had sued unsuccessfully to block the payments beforehand.
2024 Events (1)
Elon Musk's America PAC paid Pennsylvania swing-state voters $47 apiece to sign and refer a political petition ahead of the 2024 election
Ahead of the November 2024 election, Elon Musk's America PAC began offering registered swing-state voters $47 — later raised to $100 — to sign, and to refer others to sign, a petition backing "free speech and the right to bear arms," with Musk promoting the payments as "easy money" on X. The petition targeted voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Two federal class-action lawsuits later filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania allege canvassers and voters were never paid as promised.