Democracy Wins in Wisconsin…Sort Of

Musk gets away with vote buying, again.

Democratic candidate Susan Crawford easily defeated Brad Schimel last night to hold the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Crawford’s resounding win was a massive overperformance in a state that went to Trump by .9% in November. Democrats also overperformed in two very red Florida Senate seats. This continues a trend of Democrats beating the stuffing out of the GOP in off-year elections in the Trump era.

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The Wisconsin victory means that Republicans will not be able to fix national election results for Republicans, won’t be able to gut abortion rights in the state, and won’t be able to gerrymander state elections, returning Wisconsin to bleak one party rule.

It’s also a major rebuke to Elon Musk, who spent tens of millions in the state to defeat Crawford, money he might as well have simply set on fire. In fact, Musk is so unpopular he may have hurt Schimel’s chances. Musk has tried to exert political influence by threatening to spend money against pols who defy him; this is a powerful rebuke and suggests that his “help” can in fact be a poison pill.

You can’t just leave it up to voters to defend democracy

This is all to the good. And yet, the victory for democracy in Wisconsin comes with a major asterix.

Musk didn’t just personally spend tens of millions of dollars in the race—an assault on democratic norms enabled by Citizens United and the gutting of campaign finance laws over the last two decades. He also literally offered to pay people for votes, a throwback to the gutter, blatant election corruption of the Tammany Hall era.

In a rally the day before the election, Musk handed out $1 million checks to two Wisconsin voters. The exact mechanics of how the voters were chosen was unclear—Musk says that voters who sign a petition supporting his position enter a raffle. But the rally was clearly meant to convince voters that if they voted for Musk’s candidate, he might pay them a life-changing sum of money.

Musk did something similar in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, in the general election. Saurav Ghosh, director of campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group, told CNN that he and many legal analysts believe that this kind of vote buying gimmick is illegal.

GHOSH: Well, I should be really clear on this point. I am of the opinion — and I think this is an opinion other election lawyers share — that that is actually not sanctioned by campaign finance law. It’s not a campaign finance issue. It’s really more a question of election laws that prohibit vote-buying, but that appears to be what Musk’s program did in the 2024 election, and potentially even with what’s happening with the judicial election in Wisconsin.

Despite what looks to be a blatantly illegal vote buying scheme, though, judges in PA and WI have so far refused to sanction Musk. The Supreme Court in Wisconsin turned down the case with no explanation.

It’s easy to see why the WI SC might not want to weigh in here on a case directly affecting its own composition. Judges might feel like taking the case would compromise their own impartiality. It’s also difficult to know whether the vote buying actually affects elections. In this instance, again, it’s very possible that the unpopular Musk’s gratuitous efforts to outright buy the election energized the opposition.

The problem, though, is that passing the buck to voters to overcome illegal assaults on democracy is rolling the dice with the constitution…and sometimes those dice rolls turn out very badly.

Voters will in some cases reject unconstitutional takeovers. But then in some cases they won’t—in part because they may not believe that democracy is under assault when elites refuse to act to defend it.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court may have felt they kept their hands clean by refusing to shut down Musk’s vote buying rally. But by refusing to take the case they effectively cosigned Musk’s tactics, signaling that it’s fine to write giant checks to incentivize voters. That weakens democracy, even if the worst-case outcome was avoided this time.

Other countries manage not to suck

Other countries have figured out the downsides here, and have taken strong action to defend their democracies from bad actors. Brazil, for example, has ordered would be dictator Jair Bolsonaro to stand trial for a coup attempt. Far right leader Marine Le Pen was just convicted of embezzlement in France; she’s been banned from running for election for five years.

In contrast, both Trump and Musk have spent literally decades breaking laws and defying regulators and facing few if any consequences. Musk’s candidate lost the Wisconsin election, but if he is not prosecuted and convicted for egregious election violations, there’s nothing to stop him from trying the same tactics again.

Worse, the culture of impunity, and the institutional refusal to hold Musk to account, signals to voters that our democracy is a fraud and a joke. It increases cynicism and saps the collective will to fight for our constitution and our democracy. If the powerful won’t defend our institutions, if leaders can’t be bothered to fight, then a lot of voters with less power are going to conclude democracy isn’t worth fighting for.

That’s how we’ve gotten to this awful place. Crawford’s win is a sign that voters are looking to try to climb out of the abyss. The court’s refusal to hold Musk to account, though, shows that institutions continue to refuse to lend a hand.