On Sunday, a few thousand people in Green Bay, Wisconsin, gathered to hear Elon Musk speak — and give away two giant cardboard checks for $1 million. Attendance at the event was limited to people who had added their names to a petition against “activist judges,” created by Musk’s America PAC. He has promised money and other “surprise announcements” to people who sign the petition, and the splashy million-dollar giveaway ratcheted up the stakes. After their names were announced, winners shuffled onstage to awkwardly accept the prop checks and pause for a photo op with Musk, who has poured tens of millions of dollars into the race for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court seat.
The checks are Musk’s latest attempt to use his vast wealth to turn out voters ahead of Tuesday’s election. He has promised $100 to voters who sign the “activist judges petition” and micro-earnings for people who hold up a photo of Musk’s chosen candidate with a thumbs-up. The petition and the promises of money are a not-so-subtle way of collecting registered voter data.
It’s the same playbook Musk deployed ahead of the November presidential election that some elections experts say broke the law around vote buying. This time, Musk and his America PAC are looking to tilt the close Wisconsin race toward Brad Schimel, a conservative judge and outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump. Schimel is running against the more liberal Susan Crawford, who has garnered support from the state Democratic party.
At Sunday’s event, Musk repeatedly said the checks were a gimmick to garner media coverage. But the giveaways are clearly meant to entice voters as well, giving them the impression that anyone who signs America PAC’s petitions has a chance to win the money.
The two recipients, Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler, supported that narrative in professionally shot videos shared to X by Musk’s America PAC. “I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign a petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars,” Diestler says in a video that has since been deleted. Another video states that Jacobs, who identifies himself as the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans, “earned” the money for signing the petition.
“I was in the audience and my name was called as the recipient of a check for $1 million, and I didn’t believe it. I was nervous, I was shaking,” Jacobs says in the video clip.
Jacobs’ affiliation with the College Republicans wasn’t disclosed onstage, and most news coverage has described Diestler simply as “a voter,” a stand-in for an average person who could experience a windfall if they sign Musk’s petitions. But Diestler is a graphic designer, according to LinkedIn, for a packaging company in the Green Bay area called Belmark Inc — which has strong ties to major Republican donors. Coupled with Jacobs’ affiliation, it raises questions about how the “spokespeople” for America PAC were selected.
Belmark was founded by Bruce Bell, a major donor to Republican causes both personally and through organizations he controls. According to Federal Election Commission and Wisconsin campaign finance data, Bell contributed $7,500 to Schimel’s campaign between December 2024 and February 2025. Bell has also contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign, the Wisconsin Republican Party, and Republican politicians running in the state, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars to other causes over the years. Bell and other family members operate the Easter Foundation, which has given grants to anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers,” the Heritage Foundation, and other groups, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The promises to Wisconsin voters mirror what happened in swing states like Pennsylvania leading up to the election of Trump in November. In those cases, Musk first claimed America PAC would randomly offer $1 million to signatories of a petition. Then, after scrutiny about whether the sweepstakes-style gimmick was legal, Musk backtracked. Lawyers representing the super PAC told a judge that winners were not randomly selected but handpicked based on their ability to be political talking heads.
Neither Belmark nor Diestler responded to The Verge’s requests for comment. The Wisconsin College Republicans also did not return a request for comment. America PAC declined to comment.
Musk’s attempts to use money as a political carrot for voters have raised alarm from legal experts. Some say that requiring voters to be registered or to have voted in an election in order to receive the promised money flies in the face of laws prohibiting vote buying. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, lodged a last-minute attempt to block the $1 million giveaway; minutes before the rally began, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling declining to hear the legal challenge, The Associated Press reported. At least until now, the big checks have been allowed to proceed.
Musk, Trump, and other Republicans have repeatedly claimed without evidence that protestors and angry constituents are “paid” operatives, bankrolled by liberal billionaires. It’s not clear how Musk and his America PAC selected the so-called winners of $1 million, and Musk has described the stunt as paying people to be “spokesmen,” which sounds more like a political job than a miracle stroke of luck. But conducted onstage for all the world to see, the giveaways look like a way to sucker voters into believing they might amass wealth like the billionaire in front of them — with nothing more than a signature and a promised vote required.
