News from the States:

Georgia’s State Election Board has accused the rideshare company Lyft of violating Georgia’s election law by offering discounted rides to users who were heading to the polls.

At a Tuesday meeting, the board voted 3-1 to issue a letter to Lyft, alleging that the company violated a provision of Georgia’s election code that prohibits “giving or receiving, offering to give or receive, or participating in the giving or receiving of money or gifts for registering as a voter, voting, or voting for a particular candidate.” 

Violating the law is a felony offense, though the board is not issuing a fine or referring the case for criminal prosecution.

The incident stems from a series of two complaints filed by a Georgia resident ahead of  the 2022 general election, flagging programs dedicated to providing transportation to the polls as potential election law violations. The first complaint was aimed at Rideshare2vote, a left-learning nonprofit dedicated to increasing turnout among Democratic voters. The second complaint was lodged against Lyft, which has been involved in voter outreach efforts across the country for the past decade. 

A subsequent investigation conducted by the secretary of state’s office found that although Rideshare2vote stated that its goals were to turn out more Democratic voters, the organization provided free rides and did not turn away voters of any political affiliation. Rideshare2vote also instructed its volunteers not to ask voters about their political affiliation or urge them to support any parties or candidates. The board voted to dismiss a complaint against Rideshare2vote Tuesday.

Lyft’s voter outreach program, which provided discounted — rather than free — rides to the polls for voters across the state, proved to be a trickier issue….

Johnston also highlighted a potential lack of access to rideshare services like Lyft in rural parts of the state, and claimed that offering discount codes to voters amounted to “vote hauling,” or buying votes….

Secretary of state investigator Michael Brunson recommended that the complaint be dismissed, noting that similar cases have been dismissed by the board in the past. However, Johnston and another Trump-aligned member of the board, Janelle King, pushed for more action to be taken. The board will issue a letter of instruction to Lyft in the coming weeks….

Andrew Albright has published this student note in the California Law Review. Here is the abstract:

This Note explores the idea of paying Americans to cast their ballots as a mechanism to increase electoral participation among lower income voters and rebalance the influence that wealthy Americans have on policy outcomes. The Note begins by exploring the rationale behind the idea, drawing on political science, economic, and legal literature to argue that subsidizing the franchise could help rebalance elected officials’ perception of the “median voter” away from the wealthy. The Note hypothesizes that a small dollar incentive, perhaps no more than $20, paid in a municipal election would have a greater incentivizing effect on low-propensity, low-income voters than it would on higher-income voters. Next, the Note explores the legality and constitutionality of paying the voter. When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, vote buying became illegal across the United States. Nevertheless, this Note argues that, based on the legislative history of the Act, a government program to incentivize voting would be legal under federal law. Further, neither the First nor the Fourteenth Amendment poses a barrier to such a program, and a local government in California could enact such a program without violating state law. Finally, the Note explores policy design, proposing that policymakers should begin in a local government, provide direct and highly visible subsidies, and allow voters who cast blank ballots to collect a subsidy.

Daniel Bice for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Just how nervous is billionaire Elon Musk about allegations that he may be violating the state’s bribery statute by paying people to vote?

On Tuesday, Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, pulled a video from X featuring $1 million giveaway winner Ekaterina Deistler in which she said she received the money, in part, to “vote.” X is owned by the tech billionaire.

“My name’s Ekaterina Deistler,” she said in a video posted Monday morning. “I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign the petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars.”…

But the video was taken down yesterday, and America PAC posted a new video of Deistler on X on Tuesday afternoon.

“My name’s Ekaterina Deistler, and I’m from Green Bay, Wisconsin,” she said in the new video. “I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign the petition, refer friends and family, and now I have a million dollars.”

It’s almost exactly the same, except the word “vote” has been removed. She is no longer saying she was paid, in part, to vote in the Supreme Court race….

NBC News:

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said Friday he would seek a court order to block tech billionaire and White House adviser Elon Musk from awarding million-dollar prizes to people at a weekend event ahead of next week’s pivotal state Supreme Court race.

“The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that elections in Wisconsin are safe, secure, free, and fair. We are aware of the offer recently posted by Elon Musk to award a million dollars to two people at an event in Wisconsin this weekend,” Kaul, a Democrat, said in a statement.

“Based on our understanding of applicable Wisconsin law, we intend to take legal action today to seek a court order to stop this from happening,” Kaul continued. 

Musk, who has become a central figure in the race to decide partisan control of the state Supreme Court, has sunk millions of dollars on behalf of the conservative candidate in the race, Brad Schimel (who is also backed by President Donald Trump).

Musk announced on Friday morning that he would travel to Wisconsin for an event limited to those who had already voted in the election and that he would “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”

But he deleted that post midday, replacing it with a similar message that removed any linkage between his actions and voting. He declared the $1 million winners would instead be “spokesmen” for his petition to oppose “activist judges,” and added the event would only be limited to those who signed his petition…

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Billionaire Elon Musk will visit Wisconsin Sunday and hand out $1 million checks to voters just two days before the high-stakes state Supreme Court election.

Musk first announced his event in a post on his social media platform X that was up for hours until questions were raised about the legality of his plan to present two $1 million checks to voters who had cast ballots.

He deleted that post and soon put up a new one clarifying that the checks would be given to individuals who would serve as spokespeople for his “Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges.” The new post also no longer said attendance would be limited “to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” as the original post had stated….

“To clarify a previous post, entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges,” he wrote. “I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition.”

Musk, a close ally of President Donald Trump, personally and via two groups has poured about $20 million into the race to back conservative candidate Brad Schimel….

See my earlier post: Elon Musk Appears to Be Breaking Wisconsin Law Against Vote Buying in Offering a Chance to Win $1 Million to Anyone Who Voted in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race.

Votebeat:

Progressives determined to defeat Donald Trump but unsatisfied with Kamala Harris’s position on the war in Gaza were offered an 11th-hour voting option this year: In October, a group called Swap Your Vote began offering to match voters in politically “safe” states with those in swing states.

The idea was that a prospective Democratic voter in a reliably blue state could instead cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate on behalf of their match in the swing state. The swing-state voter would feel like, through the trade, they were voting their conscience without putting their broader election aims at risk.

Such vote swapping isn’t new. In 2000, multiple sites popped up on the relatively new World Wide Web, connecting prospective Al Gore voters in solid Republican states with voters in swing states who wanted to vote for Ralph Nader.

This year, as in 2000, vote swapping didn’t generate a large volume of protest votes, and the Trump opponents failed in their broader aim to deny him a victory in the swing states. But voters who participated in vote swaps said it provided them with a useful outlet to cast a meaningful vote while remaining true to their core beliefs….

In 2000, websites like vote-swap2000.com, votexchange2000.com, and NaderTrader.com launched in response to an article by constitutional law professor Jamie Raskin (now a U.S. congressman from Maryland), proposing vote swapping as a way to prevent protest votes from costing Gore the election.

The websites enabled third-party supporters in swing states such as Florida and Ohio to agree to be paired with major-party supporters in “safe states” such as Massachusetts or Texas.

Republican Bill Jones, who was California’s Secretary of State at the time, had threatened operators of the sites with criminal prosecution, claiming that what they were doing was similar to “vote buying” in violation of election laws. The creators of vote-swap2000.com and votexchange2000.com disabled their vote-swapping mechanisms but claimed in court that Jones’ threatened prosecution violated their First Amendment rights.

Almost seven years later, the judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that vote swapping was not the same as “buying” votes because no money or thing of value changed hands. The court further held the practice to be protected by the First Amendment.

But the legality of vote-swapping initiatives could yet be challenged, says Michael Morley, an election law professor at Florida State University’s College of Law.

“The Supreme Court has never directly addressed the issue,” Morley says — and neither have most of their federal appeals courts. Given that, while this precedent might be persuasive to the Court, “they are also free to reject it.”

Morley says swapping votes could be interpreted as “paying someone for their vote, whether you’re paying them in cash, services or through someone else promising to vote a particular way.” Thus, Morley cautioned, a court could reach a different conclusion than the 9th Circuit did in 2007.

Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, agrees that legal uncertainty hangs over vote-swapping. There’s an argument that exchanging votes is an exchange of value and a form of illegal vote buying, he said. But there are strong arguments to the contrary, he noted.

“A legislator cannot exchange anything of value for her vote on a bill, for example,” he explained. “But what if there’s horse trading between legislators — ‘I vote for your bill if you vote for mine?’ Some have argued that pure political exchanges should not be covered by bribery laws. One could say the same about vote swapping.”

Hasen added: “There’s also an argument that these are not enforceable contracts, and so that makes them not an agreement to engage in vote buying.”