Lawsuit alleges Elon Musk and affiliated groups used illegal scheme to induce Wisconsinites to vote in WI Supreme Court race
In June 2025 Law Forward, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Hecker Fink LLP filed a complaint in Dane County Circuit Court on behalf of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and a group of Wisconsin voters, alleging that billionaire Elon Musk and groups affiliated with him violated multiple Wisconsin laws—including the election-bribery statute—during the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
The complaint alleges that in the closing days of the election campaign, Musk and affiliated political organizations injected tens of millions into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, including by paying millions directly to Wisconsin voters. In an effort to engineer a victory for his preferred candidate, Musk and the other defendants conspired to develop and implement a brazen scheme to induce Wisconsinites to vote. First, they paid registered voters $100 to sign a petition. Second, as detailed in the complaint, they paid millions of dollars in “awards” to selected Wisconsin voters who had signed that petition. Musk stated that the $1 million awards were “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
Wisconsin law prohibits offering, giving and/or promising to give any amount of money over $1 to induce anyone to (a) go to the polls, (b) vote, and/or (c) vote for a particular person. By offering and paying Wisconsin citizens amounts far greater than $1 in this scheme, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants violated Wisconsin’s election-bribery law.
“We are fighting for free and fair elections.” said Attorney Jeff Mandell of Law Forward. “We believe our democracy demands better than schemes like this. So, we are working to hold Musk accountable and stop this from becoming the new normal.”
Law Forward has a history of holding bad actors to account. With a novel civil suit in 2022, we exposed that the fraudulent-elector scheme was cooked up here in Wisconsin and then spread to other states. With a 100-page complaint to the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation, we held former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman accountable for ethical abuses during his sham “investigation” into the 2020 election.