Elon Musk sends $1 million a day to “buy votes” for Trump: What is American democracy worth?

In the 2024 US presidential election, the big surprise is Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s “desperate” support for Donald Trump. Musk officially announced his support for Trump after Trump was assassinated on July 13 and was grazed by a bullet in his right ear In addition to supporting Trump, he founded the “America PAC” (America PAC, such as Groups that can spend unlimited amounts. of money to support candidates) has also received an injection of at least US $ 75 million from him, making him one of the three political donations Trump’s best.

These political investments are indeed legitimate. However, Musk’s latest “Sign a Letter and Win Millions of Dollars” campaign may violate US election laws, and is an obvious act of “hidden vote buying”.

Is it illegal to “buy tickets under cover”?

The “American Political Action Committee” launched a campaign in 7 key swing states in this presidential election. to the Constitution). .

Meanwhile, any registered voter who signs the letter can get $100 back, and those who refer other voters to sign in Pennsylvania can get an additional $100 (in the six other swing states, this amount is $47).

Musk has issued a $1 million check to two voters in Pennsylvania:

US federal law prohibits anyone from giving anything of monetary value (including lottery entries) to another person in exchange for the other person registering as a voting or voting Violators can be fined $10,000 or imprisoned for 5 years. This law is not limited to asking voters to vote for them, as long as it gives benefits to voters to participate in voting, it is already illegal.

In 2008, the famous ice cream brand “Ben & Jerry’s” with clear progressive political views distributed a free ice cream design to all voters who had voted one day a year.

“Musk’s sign to win millions of dollars” literally goes around this legal obstacle. However, since participants were asked to fill in their personal contact information when signing the petition, this became the basis for the American Political Action Committee to later lobby them to vote for Trump .

Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro publicly criticized this as “black money” flowing into the election on October 20, indicating that law enforcement agencies should intervene in the investigation.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, also believes that Musk’s actions clearly violate election laws, indicating that this is the use of bonuses to encourage Pennsylvania citizens to register as voters. – the “Sign Up”. ” campaign “American Political Action Committee” Coincidentally, the date of the event is set on October 21, which is the last day for voter registration in the state.

In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by only about 80,000 votes, equal to 1.16% of the total votes. In this election, the role of Pennsylvania may be more important than in 2020. It can be said that “if you win Pennsylvania, you win the world.” Musk’s political position in supporting Trump is unique in using money to attract registered voters, which is likely to help Trump’s supporters defeat his opponent Kamala Harris in the state).

Musk’s democratic experiment?

The phenomenon of vote buying is very common in many developing countries that practice voting democracy. However, with economic development, electoral management and the development of citizen awareness, the popularity of vote buying will gradually decrease. In European and American countries that have practiced democracy for a long time or are heavily influenced by related cultures, vote buying is almost beyond imagination – for example, the vote buying page of “Wikipedia” but only one sentence referring to Hungary, does not even include any European countries and (narrowly) North American countries.

Just as Trump’s erroneous comments criticizing electric vehicles revealed that the US electric vehicle industry is lagging behind China, Musk’s covert “vote-buying” operation also appears to target the flaws of the democratic voting system to show

The rationality of democracy lies in the demonstration of autonomy, which means that the laws and norms of the society itself come from the will of the people themselves, the laws and rules that everyone ‘ stick to them imposed on them by external forces, but set by themselves came out. In a voting democracy system, this assumes that everyone can at least transcend their own interests and consider their voting intentions based on the general interests of the entire society.

Various political philosophers have tried to examine this idea of ​​the transcendence of personal interests from different angles. During the Enlightenment, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed the “general will” (volonté générale), which in part assumed that everyone has the ability to consider things from an external perspective personal interests, and from this point of view See , everyone can reach a consensus, so the law is a public consciousness, which is also said to be a declaration of self-determination.

The American political philosopher John Rawls also proposed the “veil of ignorance” thought experiment, assuming that people would choose what kind of basic society they would choose in a context without knowing their social status. have, thus excluding the social status of interest.

The problem is that, in the real voting system, people often lack the ability to consider things from the point of view of real personal interests. If Musk’s hidden “buying of votes” could have a visible effect in a country like the United States, which has implemented a democratic system for two hundred years, this can be considered a major question of the rationality of voting democracy itself.

In addition to “buying votes” under cover, Musk also went out to spread a Trump-style conspiracy theory about the Democratic Party’s election fraud this time, and used his X platform from time to time to promote relevant information. From a moral point of view, this is shameless. However, from the perspective of meta-analysis of the democratic system, such as “buying votes”, this is an empirical act that highlights the inability of ordinary voters to filter out real and basic facts. fake

Amidst the 2024 US election, which is full of absurd drama, what is taking place behind the scenes is a true democratic experiment that will revise the voting system itself at the beginning of the 21st century.