Elon Musk settles lawsuits over $1 million voter giveaway
Plaintiffs claiming Musk’s $1 million voter lottery was a fraud are settling for an undisclosed sum.
Plaintiffs claiming Musk’s $1 million voter lottery was a fraud are settling for an undisclosed sum.
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is the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.
In 2024, Elon Musk promised to give away $1 million a day to a randomly selected registered voter in a swing state. That prompted legal challenges, raised questions about its legality, and drew lawsuits from two Arizona residents claiming the lottery was a fraud. Musk has now agreed to settle the two lawsuits filed in Austin, Texas, though the details of the settlement have not been made public.
The plaintiffs claim that when Musk announced the sweepstakes, he falsely claimed the prizes would be awarded randomly. Philadelphia’s District Attorney sued to stop the giveaway, claiming that Musk was running an illegal lottery. During a hearing, Chris Gober, a representative for Musk’s America PAC, told the judge that “The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance … We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”
That directly contradicted Musk’s claim that the drawings were random. The plaintiffs say they never would have signed the petition required to enter the giveaway if they had known it wasn’t random. They accused Musk and America PAC of using it as a ploy to obtain user data and said the petition “places no limitations on America PAC’s use of or sale of the personal data it collects, nor does it provide any additional information about the planned use of data.”
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