Tim Balk for the NYT:

Cards Against Humanity, the irreverent party game that has needled Donald J. Trump and his allies for years, has inserted itself into the presidential campaign.

The card game, which asks players to match words and phrases to create what is often crude humor, is promising to pay up to $100 to reluctant Democratic-leaning voters if they publicly mock the former president and make a plan to vote.

The company said it started issuing payments on Tuesday, after it had created a vulgarity-laced website to recruit potential voters who sat out the 2020 election.

The payment recipients do not need to prove that they voted for Vice President Kamala Harris or that they voted at all, under the terms of the program….

The website for the program, which carries a moving banner with phrases like “This Could Actually Swing the Election,” asserts that the program is “exploiting a legal loophole to pay America’s blue-leaning non-voters.”

The federal legal code says that it is a violation to pay, or to offer to pay, anyone to vote. It is also illegal to accept such payments.

A spokeswoman for Cards Against Humanity, Maria Ranahan, said in an email that the program was “completely legal.”

“We’re not asking nor paying people to pledge or promise to vote (or not vote), or even to register to vote, all of which would be illegal,” she said. “Whether people actually use the plans they make is entirely up to them — we’ll have paid up regardless.”

Legal experts were divided on the issue.

Jessica Levinson, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said the company was making a flimsy distinction. “I do not think this is legal,” she said, adding, “Making a plan to vote sounds like saying, ‘I’m paying you to vote.’”

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he thought that the program was “very close” to breaking the law but that it did not because of the “fine print,” referring to the program’s terms of services, which say that failing to vote does not affect participants’ eligibility for payments….

The website it pretty funny.