by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
The Oxford On-Line Dictionary offers this definition of "lottery": "A process or thing whose success or outcome is governed by chance."
Elon Musk, the world's richest human, is currently involved in an effort to send Donald Trump back to the White House. On October 19th Musk made an announcement at a rally in Pennsylvania which excited a bunch of people. He told Trump rally-goers that he was going "to be awarding one million dollars randomly to people who have signed the petition - every day from now until the election."
(After carefully removing my shoes and socks so that I could get the count right, I believe that means he will probably issue his 18th and final million dollar check today to some lucky, random, petition-signer.)
The petition to which Elon Almighty referred is an innocuous document in which signers attest to their support of the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution. So far, so good, but: people who sign Elon's petition must be registered to vote in one of the seven swing states (Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia) and they must provide - in addition to their names - their email addresses, cell phone numbers, and mailing addresses.
All of that private and very personal information on registered voters in swing states would be of inestimable value in a close presidential election. But, it's Elon's money and if he chooses to rain it down on lucky random winners, then so be it.
But the state of Pennsylvania, for one, had some problems with the whole scheme. The state reasoned that even if Elon was not outright trying to buy votes, he was at least using his money to encourage people to register in the hopes of being randomly selected to win a million dollars - and paying people to register to vote is also illegal.
Yesterday when the state of Pennsylvania finally got the matter before a judge, after a stall by Elon as he killed a couple of days by trying unsuccessfully to get the case transferred to a federal court, Elon's lawyer, Chris Gober (who was working for Musk's America PAC), disclosed that the winners had not been chosen randomly, as in a lottery drawing, but were instead pre-selected by the super PAC (America PAC) that is primarily funded by Elon Musk, and the criteria for selection was to choose winners based on who the PAC believes would be effective political spokespeople.
Again, it's Elon's money, and if he wants to give it away to complete strangers in million-dollar lumps, he certainly can, but what some are arguing he cannot do is to promote the eventual winners as being "randomly" selected when, if fact, they are not.
The state of Pennsylvania and been arguing that Musk had been operating an illegal lottery, and Musk's lawyer essentially replied, in court, that it was not a game of chance because the winners were pre-selected based on their perceived ability to be of help to the Trump campaign. The money was more of a "salary" than it was a lottery win.
Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah, was quoted by NBC News on this new Musk revelation as saying:
"This is absolutely, unambiguously illegal. You cannot lawfully lie to the public about conducting a random sweepstakes, lottery, or contest and then rig the results to hand-select the winners. It really is not complicated. This is just fraud; a simple, ugly fraud on the public."
Elon Musk, of course, is rich enough that no court will get very meaningfully deep into his pocket, but this scam has at least given him the street cred to prove to the national Republican Party that he is, at his core, one of them. And from a taxpayer's perspective, it is nice to know that now some of Musk's money is actually going to be taxed by the US government!
Small mercies.
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