Musk’s Super PAC Offers $47 to Those Who Help It Find Trump Voters
by https://www.nytimes.com/by/theodore-schleifer · NY TimesMusk’s Super PAC Offers $47 to Those Who Help It Find Trump Voters
Musk’s group wants registered voters to sign a petition that it can use to target potential supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It’s offering a cash reward for referrals.
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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Elon Musk is dangling part of his fortune as part of a potentially expensive arrangement to identify likely voters for Donald Trump in seven battleground states.
The super PAC founded by Mr. Musk, the billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX, is circulating a petition in which voters pledge their support for the First and Second Amendments. And he is offering $47 for each voter recruited to sign it.
The goal is “to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” the petition says. If recruiters managed to find 1 million people to sign the petition, Mr. Musk would be on the hook for a staggering $47 million.
The petition, which is also being circulated to Mr. Musk’s 200 million followers on his social media platform X, is meant to identify voters who are particularly energized, a common list-building activity at all levels of politics. Those voters, who have taken the initiative to sign a petition affirming their conservative views, could be then be especially targeted by Mr. Musk’s organization, America PAC, to turn out for Mr. Trump.
Like other online list-circulation efforts, this one collects data on signatories. The website asks for the signer’s name, email address, cell number, mailing address and the referrer’s information.
There appears to be no limit on the number of registered voters that someone can refer, raising the possibility that the referral program could be gamed. But the super PAC says that it will check: “Eligible people may only list one eligible person as their referrer. Before payment is made, America PAC will verify the accuracy of all information of the referrer and referee.”
The $47 payment is presumably a nod to Mr. Trump’s desire to become the country’s 47th president.
Federal law makes it is a crime to pay someone to vote or to accept payment for registering to vote or for voting. It is not illegal to pay money to voters to sign a petition or to the people persuading them to sign.
Brendan Fischer, a campaign-finance lawyer who has been critical of other work at Mr. Musk’s super PAC, said the effort did not appear to legally problematic.
“The fact that they are only paying the referrer rather than the signatory further insulates the PAC from any accusations that they are buying votes,” he said. “Ultimately, what America PAC is doing here is spending money for voter data, which PACs and campaigns do all the time.”
Mr. Musk has always been a believer in the power of referrals, most notably deploying them to build the payments company that began PayPal and to increase sales at Tesla. He has told people that he sees the most effective type of political campaigning to be by word-of-mouth, envisioning a conservative movement where voters, two-by-two, tell their neighbors about why they should vote for Mr. Trump.
The petition effort is one of several maneuvers Mr. Musk in recent days to publicly attach himself more closely to the super PAC he created.
The top of the super PAC’s website now identifies the group as the “PAC founded by Elon Musk.” Over the last few days, the group acquired the @America handle on X, which has pushed out Mr. Musk’s messages, and Mr. Musk has encouraged his 200 million followers to follow the account and the website. Mr. Musk’s bio on X now says, solely: “Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President.”
The center of the super PAC’s website features a carousel of tweets from conservative personalities, including Mr. Musk, on the topics of “Secure Borders,” “Safe Cities,” “Free Speech,” “Sensible Spending,” “Fair Justice System,” and “Self-Protection.”
Mr. Musk and his political advisers spent the past few days in Pennsylvania, a state where Mr. Musk said he was “focusing heavily.” He spoke at Mr. Trump’s Saturday rally in Butler, Pa., and he attended the Steelers-Cowboys game in Pittsburgh, which his super PAC drew attention to on X.
Mr. Musk is also preparing to spend more of his money on door-knocking across the country to help Mr. Trump. The group, which has hired thousands of canvassers in recent months, now says it will offer them $30 per hour, an increase from what some of its previous contractors were paying, about $25 per hour on the high end.