Photo: Elon Musk in 2022. Public domain
Elon Musk is trying to buy the election for Donald Trump. This is far from the first time a billionaire has tried to get his favorite politician in office, but now Musk is using a tactic that sets him apart from other ultra-rich donors: openly buying people’s votes.
How Musk’s scheme works
Musk presents his vote-buying scheme as a petition in support of free speech and gun rights. If you sign the petition and live in a swing state, you get $47 – or $100 if you live in the especially important swing state of Pennsylvania. If you refer a friend to sign the petition, then you get paid too. And then one lucky Pennsylvanian who signed the petition will win a daily lottery and receive $1 million!
To sign the petition, you have to be a registered voter. Many political operatives this election cycle believe that the margin between Harris and Trump will be so close that the outcome will be determined by who can convince small numbers of people who typically do not vote to come out to the polls. The “petition” essentially pays people who lean towards right-wing ideas to register to vote. And then petition signers’ personal information is fed into Musk’s lavishly-funded turnout operation, which bombards the newly-registered voters with non-stop messages to get them to actually cast a ballot on election day.
Experts generally agree this is illegal. Federal law bans accepting payments to register to vote, and explicitly mentions lottery chances as a banned form of payment. But Musk doesn’t care – his army of lawyers will keep him out of serious trouble, and by the time there are any legal consequences Trump might be the president.
Not Just Musk: The Billionaire Class Owns the Elections
Even though they can be complicated and unpredictable, elections actually help the billionaire class exercise their dictatorship over the rest of society. It promotes the idea of “the consent of the governed” – that the politicians in charge have a mandate from the people – and provides an outlet for dissent that doesn’t challenge the fundamental power of the capitalists. Open dictatorship that relies solely on police state violence is a more unstable type of rule that is more likely to be overthrown.
Using the power of the media, the courts, and other institutions that shape consciousness and the law – the ruling elite are able to restrict choices so that virtually all the candidates who can realistically win are friendly to their interests. But to give the appearance of free choice, there are rules in place to limit how millionaires and billionaires can use their money to boost their preferred candidate. But these rules have gradually broken down in recent years.
In 2010, the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case led to the creation of a type of fundraising organization called “super PACs” (PAC stands for political action committee). There would be no limits to the amount of money someone could donate to a super PAC, and the only limitation was that super PACs were not allowed to directly coordinate their activity with the official campaign apparatus of a candidate. The organization Elon Musk is using to pump tens of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign is called “America PAC,” which is a super PAC. Another ruling in 2014 in the McCutcheon case eroded limitations on how the super-rich can donate to the Democratic or Republican parties themselves.
There were always loopholes that allowed super PACs to de facto coordinate with campaigns. For instance, a campaign could “leak” a key strategic priority to the public, and then a super PAC would fund an ad campaign addressing that priority shortly thereafter. Earlier this year, lawyers for right-wing Senator Lindsey Graham were able to get the Federal Election Commission to further loosen rules for how Super PACs and campaigns share data.
The only way to get money out of politics is socialism
The trend towards more and more blatant election-buying is a logical outcome of a social order where such a huge amount of wealth is concentrated in so few hands. If a tiny handful of people are able to accumulate such enormous amounts of money, of course they will endlessly look for any loophole to exploit and find ways to put that money to use influencing the direction of society.
Control of government policy offers capitalists a massive return on investment. Elon Musk’s companies, for instance, rely heavily on government subsidies. Trump’s tax policies also promise to be extremely favorable for Musk. Are we supposed to believe that any billionaire would just sit on their hands and hope for the best, when their vast fortunes are at stake?
If we want to break the political dominance of the billionaire class, we have to confiscate their stolen wealth. Elon Musk has never built, designed, tested or maintained a car or rocket in his life. Why should he enjoy an unimaginable fortune that allows him to buy politicians and elections? We can get money out of politics, but only if we end the capitalist system that makes money the very essence of politics.
