By offering $47 for every swing-state voter referral who signs petition, America PAC (Musk’s political action committee) wants to perhaps open an avenue to target potential supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Elon Musk may have decided to invest a very small part of his fortune as part of an arrangement to identify probable voters for Donald Trump in seven battleground states but in the process has made a big statement. This has brought to fore the fact that how passionate he is about re-election of Trump.

America PAC that is circulating a petition in which voters pledge their support for the First and Second Amendments is basically the super PAC founded by Mr. Musk, the billionaire tech magnate who is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. So, $47 that America PAC is offering for each voter recruited to sign the petition is effectively being offered by Mr. Musk himself. If recruiters in fact managed to find 1 million people to sign the petition, Mr. Musk would have to shell out a staggering $47 million. The goal is “to get 1 million registered voters in swing states to sign in support of the Constitution, especially freedom of speech and the right to bear arms,” says the petition.

The petition, which is even being circulated to Mr. Musk’s 200 million followers on X (social media platform Musk owns), is intended to identify voters who are particularly energized, a common list-building activity at all levels of politics. Those voters, who have taken the initiative to sign a petition confirming their conservative views, could then be specifically targeted by Mr. Musk’s organization, America PAC, to turn out to vote for Mr. Trump. Same as other online list-circulation efforts, this one also gathers data on signatories. The website asks for the signatory’s name, cell number, email address, mailing address and the referrer’s information.

There seems to be no limit on the number of registered voters that someone can refer, raising the likelihood that the referral program could be gamed. But America PAC says that it will check: “Eligible people may only list one eligible person as their referrer. Before payment is made, America PAC will verify the accuracy of all information of the referrer and referee.”

The $47 payment is seemingly a nod to Mr. Trump’s wish to become the nation’s 47th president. Federal law makes paying someone to vote or to accept payment for registering to vote or for voting a criminal offence. Though, it is not unlawful to pay money to voters to sign a petition or to the people persuading them to sign.