Musk gives millions to Wisconsin voters to support his Supreme Court candidate.

WashingtonElon Musk has applied the same tactic to Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court elections that he used with Donald Trump's election campaign: giving huge sums to conservative Justice Brad Schimel, holding rallies in his favor, and handing out giant checks to voters. At an event he held on Sunday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Musk handed out $1 million checks to two voters and promised the rest of the attendees that he would pay them $20 for each voter they recruited before Tuesday, April 1. A Democratic lawyer in the state has already filed a lawsuit for possible violation of election law. Musk has invested millions in this race because it could determine the future of the narrow Republican majority in Congress ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

At stake in the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections is whether the progressive majority (4 justices to 3) is maintained or a conservative majority is changed. The elections coincide with a time when the state court is due to decide cases related to abortion rights, congressional redistricting, and voting rules, which will affect next year's midterm elections and the 2028 presidential elections. Coincidentally, a lawsuit filed by Tessk to open car dealerships is also underway and will likely end up on the state Supreme Court's desk.

In the last election, Wisconsin was one of seven key battleground states, and Trump won it. Amid a scenario in which the Democrats have lost almost all effective checks and balances against the president, the mid-term are the best way to regain control of the legislature and create opposition.

The boundaries of legislative districts in this key state have been changing over time, sometimes giving one party more advantage than the other. The balance of congressional district maps has been a bone of contention in the Wisconsin Supreme Court for years, and the issue flared again after a disputed 2023 election at the court handed a majority to progressive justices. In late 2023, the court ordered the state to draw new legislative districts, ruling that some lines drawn while Republicans governed Wisconsin were unconstitutional because they were not contiguous. These districts, Democrats have long argued, gave Republicans, who control both chambers of the Capitol, an unfair advantage in a swing state.

Musk's campaign involvement hasn't been limited to handing out checks to voters. According to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, America PAC, and Building for America's Future, two groups funded by the South African have spent more than $20 million supporting conservative Judge Schimel, whom Trump has also previously endorsed. "There's a very important referendum (Issue 1) on the April 1st ballot to amend the state Constitution to require voter ID [...] For State Supreme Court, be sure to vote for the patriot of 'America First"Brad Schimel, against Susan Crawford, a radical left-wing liberal with a history of being soft on pedophiles and rapists," the president wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

A referendum on Musk and Trump

The progressive candidate Trump is attacking, Susan Crawford, has received support from Democrats, who have also turned the judicial elections into a kind of test of the discursive strategy to follow to win back voters. In this case, the court election has been posed as a referendum on Musk and Trump. "I have to speak for just a minute or two about my opponent: Elon Musk," Crawford said at a rally in Kenosha. The phrase has basically become the leitmotiv of his campaign and is the new message that other Democrats, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are launching to create a new flank from which to combat Trump: focusing on the idea of oligarchy.

Just this Monday, the Vermont senator pointed out the Musk check scandal. "So, this is the state of American democracy. The richest man in the world is handing out million-dollar checks to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and elect a judge who opposes abortion rights."", Sanders wrote in X, where he shared the image of the billionaire with the giant heel during Sunday's event.

A possible violation of electoral law

The controversy over the money Musk has given voters dates back to a post he made last Thursday in which he announced the delivery of the checks in question. In the post, he explicitly stated that he would give the $1 million "as a thank you for turning out to vote." Wisconsin election law prohibits and makes it a crime to offer, give, or promise anything of value (or money) to influence voting.

Shortly after the controversy broke, Musk deleted the tweet and republished a revised version. In the post, he said that entry to the rally would be limited to those who had signed a petition against the "activist" judges and that he would deliver the checks to "two spokespersons for the petition."

Attorney General Josh Kaul on Friday asked the circuit court to issue an emergency injunction to prevent Musk from making the payments, which he called a "blatant attempt to violate" Wisconsin's anti-bribery statute.

They also questioned Musk's political action committee, America First, a proposal to pay $100 to any registered Wisconsin voter who signed a petition expressing opposition to "activist judges" or forwarded it to someone who did. Earlier this week, the group announced it had given $1 million to a Green Bay man to act as a "spokesperson to sign our Petition Opposing Activist Judges."