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Elon Musk is reported to have given million-dollar checks to two Wisconsin voters, in a giveaway which (at least, as initially offered) required people to vote in the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election in order to be eligible to win.

According to Wisconsin statute 12.11, anyone who

Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend [...] anything of value [...] to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to: [...]

  1. Vote or refrain from voting.

is in violation of the statute. To me, this seems quite straightforward: Musk's original (now-deleted) tweet reportedly offered million-dollar checks on the condition of voting. Even if Musk argues that the giveaway was actually made on a different condition as expressed in his later tweet, the original tweet makes an offer which itself seems to fall afoul of the statute, whether or not the offer is fulfilled.

However, according to the Guardian, a challenge by the State Attorney General was unanimously rejected by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court after also being rejected by two lower courts.

What is the legal basis for this challenge being rejected by the three courts?

kaya3
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2 Answers2

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Here's the quick rundown.

First, Judge Andrew Voigt for the circuit court for Columbia County, where the suit is originally filed in, refuses to hear the case. An emergency appeal is filed with the 4th District Court of Appeals in Madison.

The three judge panel for said Court of Appeals then rejects the appeal on jurisdictional and technical grounds:

...this court’s writ jurisdiction is limited to our supervisory authority over circuit courts. We conclude that the petition fails to show that the Attorney General is entitled to any form of relief that this court is permitted to provide. Therefore, we deny the petition ex parte under WIS. STAT. RULE 809.51(2) (2023-24).

More specifically, they concluded that the only relief they could have offered was to order the circuit court to hear the case, but this action was not requested by the AG anywhere. As they could offer no relief, there's nothing they could do.

AG Kaul then appeals to the state Supreme Court, who issued a unanimous rejection, but did not provide any reasoning. It is worth noting that in the appeals court decision (linked above) they specifically point out that the State Supreme Court has broader writ jurisdiction here than they do, so it was possible that, while the Appeals Court could not provide any of the requested relief, the Supreme Court could. As no reasoning was provided, we do not know the exact basis for the Supreme Court's logic. If I were to hazard a guess: they felt that the Appeals Court had acted and ruled correctly in deciding they were powerless to provide any of the requested relief, and chose not to press their potential power to do so on an emergency appeals basis.

The big question, then, is: why did the original circuit court refuse the case? Of this I'm not currently sure (I'm thinking it's a discretionary action that may also not require an explicit reasoning), and am currently having trouble finding anything other than reactions to the news largely devoid of meaningful information. But I'll update this section if I find anything.

zibadawa timmy
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Musk originally offered the payment in exchange for voting in the election. When the Wisconsin AG sued him over this, he changed the offer to be for signing a petition voicing opposition to "activist judges". The revised tweet is:

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

Signing a petition is not the same as voting in the actual election, so this new offer doesn't technically violate the law against bribing people to vote or not vote.

I've been trying to find the text of the ruling of the circuit court that upheld this, but Google hasn't been helpful (it just returns lots of news stories). The AG appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but they refused to hear the appeal so the lower court's ruling stood and Musk handed out the checks.

Barmar
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