Governor Shapiro says law enforcement should be taking “a look” at billionaire Elon Musk’s plan to randomly hand out $1 million checks between now and election day for people in Pennsylvania and other swing states who have signed his pledge to register to vote and to defend the First and Second Amendments. One law professor describes Mr. Musk’s scheme as “clearly illegal.”

“I think there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing not just into Pennsylvania but apparently into the pockets of Pennsylvanians. That is deeply concerning,” Mr. Shapiro said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. 

“Musk obviously has a right to express his views. He’s made it very, very clear that he supports Donald Trump,” the governor, who says he has a good relationship with the tech billionaire, added. “But when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions that folks may want to take a look at.”

When pressed on if Mr. Musk’s lottery plan was legal, Mr. Shapiro said, “I think it’s something that law enforcement should take a look at.”

Mr. Musk made the announcement during a rally at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Saturday night, where he surprised one attendee with an oversized check for $1 million. This follows previous payment schemes Mr. Musk set up to help recruit voters to register and to get them to sign his America PAC’s pledge to defend free speech and gun rights. 

A law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, Rick Hasen, says the system Mr. Musk has set up is “clearly illegal.”

“Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal,” Mr. Hasen wrote on his Election Law Blog on Saturday night. He cites a federal law that explicitly states it is illegal to pay someone to register to vote, as well as the Justice Department’s Elections Crimes Manual, which states that it is a crime to set up a “lottery” system to entice individuals to either register to vote or to cast ballots. 

The penalty for such activities is a hefty fine and a prison sentence of not more than five years. 

Mr. Musk’s political operation — upon which the Trump campaign has relied heavily for on-the-ground operations — has seemingly fallen flat, according to reports. 
The Guardian reported on Saturday that the billionaire’s America PAC has been rife with staffers fraudulently reporting that doors had been knocked and calls had been made. In one instance in the Guardian’s reporting, one door knocker reported that he or she had made contact with a voter at a certain residence, when in fact the America PAC employee was sitting at a restaurant nowhere near the home, according to GPS data.