Wisconsin’s bipartisan elections commission voted 5-1 that Elon Musk likely broke election bribery law. They referred the case to a district attorney

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has voted 5-1 to refer a case against Elon Musk to the Brown County district attorney, finding that the billionaire likely violated state election bribery laws. The bipartisan panel reviewed complaints about Musk’s practice of handing out $1 million checks to voters during the 2025 state Supreme Court election. Prosecutors in Brown County now have 40 days to decide whether to file criminal charges against him.

According to AP News, the commission held a closed session on Thursday, as confirmed by spokesperson Emilee Miklas. The motion approved by the panel found probable cause that Musk broke the law by using a social media post to offer $1 million to individuals who voted in the Supreme Court race. 

The commission stated that this incentive was intended to get people to vote in that election. The complaints came from voters in Milwaukee and Green Bay, with Green Bay being the city where Musk personally handed out checks at a rally shortly before the election.

Legal challenges against Musk’s voter payments have been building across multiple fronts

Musk and the groups he supported put at least $20 million into the campaign for Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Despite that, Schimel lost to Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford by 10 percentage points.

Total spending in that race exceeded $100 million, making it the most expensive judicial election in United States history. After the result, Musk announced plans to scale back his political spending.

Beyond the commission’s referral, a lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is currently pending in Brown County. That suit seeks to stop Musk from offering cash payments to voters in the state in the future, alleging that his actions amounted to unlawful conspiracy, public nuisance, and violations of prohibitions against vote bribery and unauthorized lotteries.

Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general had previously tried to stop the check handouts in 2025, but those efforts were rejected by state courts. Similar legal scrutiny has recently been applied to federal voter roll databases.

Musk’s legal team has argued that these activities are protected as free speech. In court filings from 2025, his attorneys said the payments were meant to build a grassroots movement against activist judges, rather than to directly support or oppose any specific candidate. They argued that restricting these actions would violate both the Wisconsin and U.S. constitutions.

This approach is similar to what Musk’s political action committee, America PAC, did during the 2024 presidential election. In that case, the group offered $1 million daily to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition related to the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania eventually allowed that program to continue. Fact-checkers have also recently examined false claims about election integrity in other states.

Brown County District Attorney David Lasee, a Republican, has not yet commented on the referral. His office will now decide whether the evidence warrants moving forward with criminal charges against Musk. The case is shaping up to be a significant test of how state laws handle the overlap between large-scale political spending and direct financial incentives offered to voters.