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State board: Musk may have broken election law by offering $1M checks to voters

▶ Watch Video: Why Musk is pumping millions into a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat election

The Wisconsin Elections Commission found that billionaire Elon Musk may have violated the state’s election bribery law by offering $1 million checks to voters during a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that Musk’s political action committee spent heavily in.

The commission — which is made up of three Republicans and three Democrats — voted 5-1 last Thursday to refer two complaints filed by voters against Musk to the Brown County District Attorney’s office, commission Communications Director Emilee Miklas told CBS News.

A motion approved by the committee found “probable cause” that Musk violated a state law that makes it a crime to offer a person “anything of value” to induce them to vote.

It is unclear whether Brown County District Attorney David Lasee — the top prosecutor in the county that covers Green Bay — plans to pursue charges.

CBS News has reached out to Lasee and Musk for comment.

The legal complaint revolves around Musk’s controversial practice of offering cash giveaways to certain voters who sign his political group’s petitions — a practice that started when Musk backed President Trump’s 2024 campaign and continued during Wisconsin’s April 2025 judicial election.

In Wisconsin, Musk’s America PAC awarded $1 million checks early last year to three voters who signed a petition against “activist judges.” In that race, Musk and his group had spent millions backing GOP-endorsed Judge Brad Schimel’s campaign for a seat on the state Supreme Court, though Schimel lost to Democratic-endorsed Judge Susan Crawford.

At the time, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, sued to stop Musk from making the payments, accusing him of violating state law by offering people money to vote. Musk’s lawyers argued the billionaire was exercising his right to free speech. The state’s highest court ultimately declined to take up the issue, and at a rally several days before the election, Musk handed out giant novelty checks to a pair of voters who were dubbed spokespeople for his political action committee.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-JUDICIARY
Elon Musk gives a $1 million check made to the order of Nicholas Jacobs during a town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin on March 30, 2025.

ROBIN LEGRAND/AFP via Getty Images

After the election, an advocacy group sued Musk and America PAC in state court, arguing the cash giveaways violated the state’s election bribery statute and constituted an unauthorized lottery. Musk’s legal team has sought dismissal of the suit. It is still pending.

Musk also drew scrutiny for offering giveaways in multiple swing states during the 2024 presidential election. 

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, sued Musk for offering daily $1 million checks to Pennsylvania voters, arguing they violated state election and lottery laws, though Musk’s lawyers argued the strategy was protected as “core political speech.” A judge allowed the payouts to continue.

Meanwhile, an Arizona voter is suing Musk in federal court over his 2024 $1-million-per-day giveaways, accusing him of committing fraud and breach of contract by falsely suggesting winners would be selected randomly. 

Lawyers for Musk conceded that the winners were not chosen by pure chance, and were instead “vetted” as though they were applying for a job, but argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because the plaintiff did not demonstrate fraud or suffer any injury. A federal magistrate judge in Texas found last month that the fraud claim against Musk should be allowed to go forward, but not a claim of breach of contract. A district court judge still needs to weigh in.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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