When John Dreher found out that he’d won $1 million late last week, the Pennsylvania resident pumped his arms in the air, strode onto a brightly lit stage, and shook hands with the tech billionaire behind the gift: Elon Musk.
Dazzled by Musk, Dreher said he “forgot about the money for a little bit,” according to a video posted to X by Musk’s America PAC on Saturday.
In addition to Dreher, three others have received $1 million payments as part of a daily sweepstakes for registered swing-state voters that will be held through Election Day, the America PAC website says.
But the payments may very well be illegal, election law experts told ABC News.
They said the giveaway appears to violate federal law that prohibits individuals from paying money in exchange for voter registration. But, they added, the payment scheme occupies a blurry legal area that's open to interpretation.
MORE: What would a Kamala Harris or Donald Trump victory mean for the stock market?“I’ve gone back and forth on it,” Richard Briffault, a professor of legislation at Columbia University Law School, told ABC News. “It clearly violates the spirit of the statute, but it’s not 100% clear to me that it violates the letter of the law.”
ABC News contacted Musk-owned companies Tesla and Space X in an effort to reach Musk for comment. He did not immediately respond. America PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department has sent a letter to America PAC warning Musk that his sweepstakes may violate federal law, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News on Wednesday. It's unclear if the department has already determined that Musk's giveaway is illegal.
The Justice Department declined to comment to ABC News.
To enter the sweepstakes for the $1 million prize, individuals must sign a petition circulated by America PAC that pledges support for the First and Second Amendment. The only people eligible to sign are registered voters in seven key battleground states, the America PAC website says.
Federal law targets anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting.” The penalty is a fine of no more than $10,000 or a prison sentence as long as 5 years.
Musk's initiative appears to violate the law because the exclusive eligibility for registered swing state voters and Musk’s enthusiastic support for Trump suggest that boosting voter registration makes up the primary objective of the giveaway, experts said.
“Clearly his intent is to offer monetary incentive to people to get them to register to vote,” James Gardner, a professor of election law at the University of Buffalo, told ABC News.
Doug Spencer, a professor of election law at the University of Colorado, agreed. “It seems like it really crosses the line,” he said.
Rick Hasen, the director of the UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, called the giveaway “clearly illegal” in a blog post on Saturday.
Election law allows campaigns to support voters in certain ways, such as organizing a carpool to a voting site on Election Day. However, Musk’s giveaway appears to fall into a separate category of illegal inducement for voter registration, some experts said.
“This isn’t like giving a ride to the polls,” Briffault said.
MORE: Would Trump's tariffs trigger a global trade war? Experts weigh in.Some experts said that there are plausible arguments to protect the giveaway from legal jeopardy, though. For example, it does not exclusively target newly registered voters; it is also open to longtime voters. Plus, experts added, federal law affords latitude for political speech and donations.
“This is structured in a way that creates ambiguity,” Spencer said.
Musk could face prosecution for the alleged crime, but it won’t happen before Election Day, experts said. Prosecution could act as a deterrent for potential future offenders -- though a prison sentence would be highly unlikely, and the fine could be considered negligible to a billionaire, Spencer added.
“The penalty is no more than $10,000,” Spencer said. “In practice, it may not mean very much.”
ABC News' Alexander Malin contributed to this report.