Dem
52
Ties
1
GOP
47
Elon Musk actively took part in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election—in a way that many lawyers think was illegal. Musk tweeted that he was going to give a talk in Wisconsin, with entry limited to people who had voted in the Supreme Court election. He also said he would hand out two checks for a million dollars each at the rally. Paying people to vote (or not vote) is illegal. When someone pointed this out to him, he changed that to saying admission would be limited to people who had signed a petition against activist judges. The petition campaign was simply a trick to collect e-mail addresses of people who skew Republican, since it is Republicans who generally thunder about activist judges—with no sign of irony despite the Supreme Court's project of overturning all jurisprudence it doesn't happen to like. Paying people to sign a petition might be legal since the petition didn't mean anything, but that doesn't erase his first statement. Many people called for Musk to be prosecuted for it.
On Tuesday, La Crosse County D.A. Tim Gruenke (D) announced that he was not going to prosecute Musk, despite the fact that Wisconsin's Election Commission voted 5-1 that Musk violated the state's bribery law. Gruenke said that he didn't think he could get a conviction. He said that requiring proof that one had voted in order to get into a town hall was not offering anything of value, and to qualify as a bribe, the person offering it has to offer something of value. As to the two checks for $1 million, Musk had said the lucky winners could be spokespeople for his campaign to defeat the Democratic candidate. A jury might see that as an offer to apply for a job and thus not illegal. (V)