2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Lisa Needham)
When billionaire Elon Musk isn’t on stage with Trump and—in the already-immortal words of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz—“jumpin’ around, skipping like a dipshit,” he’s busy running a pro-Donald Trump election scheme that is almost certainly illegal. Recently, he announced he’ll hand out $1 million a day to randomly selected voters who sign a petition put out by his super PAC. And even though the Justice Department has reportedly sent his PAC a warning on Monday, Musk only paused the giveaway before appearing to resume on Thursday night.
And while the sheer scope of Musk’s power and wealth makes him uniquely dangerous, the Trump era has proven especially favorable to a certain type of GOP political operative, those so cynical that engaging in large-scale election interference is just part and parcel of their electoral strategy. To be fair to the GOP, though, they were doing this before Trump. Take the 2010 gubernatorial election in Maryland.
Former GOP Gov. Robert Ehrlich was running against then-current Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley.
Ehrlich’s then-campaign manager, Paul Schurick, conducted a robocall campaign , placing calls to 110,000 phones on Election Day telling voters to stay home because “Gov. O’Malley and President Obama have been successful” and “[t]he only thing left is to watch it on TV tonight.” No one will be surprised to learn that the calls were placed in Prince George’s County and Baltimore City, where the state’s largest populations of Black residents are.
Schurick was convicted by a jury in late 2011 and, in early 2012, sentenced to a whopping 30 days of in-home detention. But Schurick’s story highlights two of the most pernicious aspects of the GOP’s modern-day voter-interference efforts. First, there’s technology.
The ability to easily spin up tens of thousands of robocalls or ads means that disinformation can quickly get sewn far and wide. Next, there’s the slow pace of the justice system, which means that any consequences come long after the damage is done. Jump forward to 2016, and Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, leveraged his considerable social media influence to try to disenfranchise Hillary Clinton voters.
Mackey and other right-wing Twitter users targeted Black voters with messages saying they could vote by text or social media. Mackey made it look like the Clinton campaign was putting out the message, adding the hashtag #ImWithHer and a disclaimer saying the ad was paid for by “Hillary for President 2016.” At least 4,900 numbers texted back.
It took until March 2023 for Mackey to be found guilty and until October 2023 for him to be sentenced to seven months in prison and a $15,000 fine. As of April 2024, Mackey was still appealing the conviction, and as of August, he remained out of prison while the appeal was pending. In August 2020, the world’s most inept right-wing fraudsters, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, went on a voter-suppression robocalling spree across multiple states.
In New York, they robocalled roughly 5,500 people, telling them if they voted by mail-in ballot, their personal information would go to debt collectors, the government, and law enforcement. Were they targeting Black voters? Of course they were ! Did it take forever for them to see any fallout from their actions? Of course it did ! It wasn’t until April 2024 that they were saddled with a $1.25 million fine.
Wohl and Burkman also targeted Black voters in Ohio with the same fraudulent message about mail-in voters. In late 2022 , they were sentenced to probation and community service. Michigan moved much faster in charging Wohl and Burkman, bringing felony charges against the pair in October 2020.
That case, however, is still going after Wohl and Burkman took it to the state Supreme Court earlier this year. Things got off to an early start in the 2024 election when political consultant Steve Kramer used artificial intelligence to fake President Joe Biden’s voice for robocalls during the New Hampshire primary. The calls told people that if they voted in the primary, they would not be able to vote in the general election.
Kramer was working for Rep. Dean Phillips in his challenge to Biden in the Democratic primary, and claimed he did it to raise awareness about the dangers of artificial intelligence. The Federal Election Commission just slapped Kramer with a $6 million fine.
While Kramer may be working the left side of the aisle, and while his assertion he was doing this for noble reasons is likely false, he’s not wrong about the danger. The ability to easily fake voices, combined with the reach of robocalls, is the next frontier in election interference. Meanwhile, Musk isn’t just engaged in a wildly questionable attempt to purchase votes.
He’s also been sharing false information about the election on X , with his false or misleading claims racking up 1.2 billion views in the first seven months of this year, despite being debunked by fact-checkers. In addition, he’s picked up on one of the right’s favorite conspiracy theories: that Dominion voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.
A similar stunt cost Fox News $787 million and led to the ousting of host Tucker Carlson. That sum would be eye-popping to many, but Musk could pay that over 300 times, with his current wealth of $266 billion . Deterring someone like Musk with fines is a fool’s errand.
The best hope is that there would be some criminal consequences for his million-dollars-a-day stunt, but given the glacial pace of justice in these types of cases, don’t hold your breath. Let's get to work electing Kamala Harris our next president! Sign up for as many shifts as you can between now and Nov. 5 to talk with progressive voters in key states who might not turn out without hearing from you!.
