While America debates whether Elon Musk’s $1 million daily sweepstakes to buy voter registration data is illegal or not, fellow Silicon Valley tech billionaire Vinod Khosla has a better idea—just sabotage it.
The OpenAI shareholder and owner of Khosla Ventures is advocating Kamala Harris supporters sign Musk’s petition in support of the Constitution as a way to level the playing field, since anyone in a swing state can participate.
Not only would they stand an equal chance to receive the cash prize as their Republican peers, but it would gum up Musk’s operation to boot. Muddying his database with an unknown number of Democrats could drain resources that could have otherwise gone to mobilizing voters for Donald Trump by wasting it on the opposing side.
“I’d encourage all democrats to sign this petition and get a shot at the $1m and then vote for Kamala Harris,“ Khosla posted on Sunday.
While the Sun Microsystems co-founder shares some of Musk’s political views, Khosla has been a steadfast opponent of former President Trump, recently calling him “dumb”, “clueless”, “senile” and a “threat to democracy”.
No matter how hard the Tesla CEO has tried to sway him to join other noted Silicon Valley venture capitalists including Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and David Sacks in backing Trump, Khosla has defied Musk’s every attempt.
Instead Khosla, who hails from India, has repeatedly warned against returning Trump to the White House: “Hard for me to support someone with no values, [who] lies, cheats, rapes, demeans women, hates immigrants like me.”
Is Elon Musk giving away money?
Musk is giving away $1 million each day until Nov. 5 to anyone that signs his petition in favor of the Constitution, provided they are registered to vote in a swing state such as Pennsylvania, the most heavily contested battleground with 19 electoral votes at stake.
Legal experts have questioned whether Musk’s cash prize potentially runs afoul of election interference rules, such as the prohibition of a quid-pro-quo payment in exchange for voter registration.
All the anodyne appeal states is encapsulated in just two sentences. The first simply states the nation’s founding document guarantees the freedom of speech and right to bear arms while the second says: “By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
The petition, which also awards $47 dollars for each registered voter that signs it, is only directed at Americans living in battleground states and is little more than a thinly-veiled ploy to harvest personal data.
Anyone signing the document has to enter their full name, address of residence, email contact and mobile phone number into a database, information his America PAC will then verify before disbursing any cash.
For a cost, this allows Musk to build a detailed list of registered voters he can then blanket with highly targeted messaging ahead of the vote.
What that could look like has already been demonstrated: one Republican political action committee has launched a series of adds that either paint Harris as an enemy of the pro-Israel or the pro-Palestine community, depending on the neighborhood.
Trump says Musk will gut government agencies in unofficial capacity
Musk’s transition has been nothing short of extraordinary. Two years ago, he had called for the former president to “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”. In March of this year, barely more than six months ago, Musk posted he wasn’t donating money to any candidates at all.
Now he has become Trump’s most tireless and valuable supporter, holding rallies in Pennsylvania, where pollsters expect the deciding electoral college votes will be cast that will put either Trump or Harris over the top.
He’s attributed the decision in part to the regulatory overreach of the Biden administration, as Tesla and SpaceX have grappled with red tape from federal transportation authority NHTSA, aviation agency FAA and labor relations board NLRB. He’s also been targeted by a Department of Justice probe—efforts Musk has branded instances of political “lawfare”.
Trump in turn has guaranteed Musk free rein from Trump to starve regulators of the human and financial resources they need to enforce compliance with federal mandates and guidelines.
When Trump was asked what government agencies he would shut down as head of state, the Republican nominee instead deferred entirely to Musk, who he said would make the decisions on behalf of the White House.
“Have you asked another person that, because I’m going to have Elon Musk…he’s dying to this,” Trump told Fox News last week.
Musk has said he believes America would do with just a quarter of the government agencies. Under Trump he may not even be directly accountable to Congress for his actions since he has no aspirations to be an official member of the administration.
“He doesn’t want to be in the cabinet,” Trump explained in the interview with Fox News. “He just wants to be in charge of cost cutting.”
