Musk lawyer says $1m voter giveaway winners are not random

PHILADELPHIA: Elon Musk’s pro-Trump group does not choose the winners of its $1 million-a-day giveaway to registered voters at random, but instead picks people who would be good spokespeople for its agenda, a lawyer for the billionaire said on Monday.

Musk lawyer Chris Gober was trying to persuade a Pennsylvania judge that the giveaway was not an “illegal lottery,” as Philadelphia district attorney Lawrence Krasner alleged in a lawsuit seeking to block the contest ahead of Tuesday’s US presidential election.

“There is no prize to be won, instead recipients must fulfill contractual obligations to serve as a spokesperson for the PAC,” Gober said in the hearing before Judge Angelo Foglietta, referring to Musk’s political action committee, known as America PAC.

The hearing in the battleground state comes just one day before Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump will square off in the tightly contested race. Musk and his political action committee are backing Trump. Musk’s offer is limited to registered voters in the seven states expected to decide the election - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.