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Elon Musk gave two Wisconsin voters $1 million each after the state’s highest court declined to hear a case that his payments amounted to bribery.
The billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump wants to boost turnout in Wisconsin’s supreme court election Tuesday, which could overturn a liberal majority. The judicial race — on which Musk has reportedly spent $22 million — is set to be the most expensive in US history.
“We just want judges to be judges,” the Tesla and Space X CEO said Sunday, before handing out checks to two voters who had signed a petition to stop ‘activist’ judges.
Lawyers for Musk said the payments were “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” the BBC reported.
“Musk’s dollars [...] have transformed what is usually a low-key, provincial election into a referendum on the current US administration’s policies and agenda,” the Financial Times wrote.
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Musk employed a similar tactic before the US presidential election last year, offering $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states if they signed a petition supporting First and Second Amendment rights.
A judge in Pennsylvania later ruled that the giveaway was legal, saying prosecutors failed to show it was an illegal lottery.