While I was riding the Amtrak train from Boston to New York this morning, I encountered a pleasant surprise: My seatmate was reading a story I wrote for Mother Jones yesterday...about officials sounding the alarm over tech titan Elon Musk's payments to pro-Trump voters.
It's always nice to meet readers in the wild. We talked about the absurdity of this election cycle, and of the Trump signs we saw dotting deep-blue Massachusetts. The substance of the article he was reading, though, was less pleasant than our interaction.
Musk is saying he will give out a million dollars a day—every day until the election—to voters in swing states who sign a petition from his pro-Trump political action committee (and no, I will not link to it). He was also pledging to pay $100 to registered Pennsylvania voters who sign his petition through today. Unsurprisingly, officials have concerns, and a couple of legal experts said it's in violation of federal election law. (The Department of Justice declined to comment.)
You might chalk this up to Musk being his ridiculous self. But in fact, it's part of a much bigger effort on the right to do whatever they can to sway the election in Trump's favor. Musk, after all, has drawn billions of views by sowing election-related anti-Democratic disinformation on X. A new report also reveals that the GOP has recruited 200,000 volunteer poll watchers, who it is training through dubious strategies grounded in paranoia about undocumented immigrants and dead people voting.
But as Trump has shown time and time again, the GOP is more than willing to brush inconvenient facts aside to stay in power. Expect them to continue doing so up to the election—and, if Trump loses, to contest the results.
—Julianne McShane
P.S. Make sure to listen to the episode of Reveal that dropped this weekend, focused on Black political power in this election—including Black Republicans who have come out in favor of Trump. Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes dropped a video (which promptly went viral) on Black Republicans following the Republican National Convention back in August, and in this podcast, he digs even deeper into "the history, traditions, and dynamics of Black conservatives in America," as he puts it. With just over two weeks until Election Day, it's a must-listen.
