The company behind the game Cards Against Humanity is aiming to one-up Elon Musk with its plan to pay blue-leaning swing-state residents who make voting plans and agree to publicly condemn Donald Trump.
The company announced an initiative Tuesday to encourage people who didn’t vote in 2020 to go to the polls this year by handing out up to $100.
On a website created by the game company, eligible voters are asked to provide their personal information, which is then checked against voter data that the company said it bought from a data broker. “You wouldn’t believe how easy it was for us to get this stuff,” the website said.
If eligible voters didn’t vote in 2020, Cards Against Humanity offers them a payout, provided they write apologies for not having voted four years ago, create voting plans and publicly post “Donald Trump is a human toilet.” If the voters lean blue and live in swing states, they can earn more money.
According to the website, over 1,700 eligible voters have already participated.
Cards Against Humanity is also selling a $7.99 card game expansion pack with cards themed to the election. It said the proceeds from the expansion pack, which go to the company’s super PAC, will contribute to the voter initiative.
Cards Against Humanity, a popular card game that features offensive and sexually explicit jokes, has increasingly taken a progressive political stance. In 2017 it started launching anti-Trump campaigns to “save America.”
Just days before Cards Against Humanity debuted the new initiative, Musk's PAC launched its own, offering $47 to people who refer registered swing-state voters to a petition in support of the Constitution’s First and Second amendments. Musk launched a pro-Trump super PAC this year that has so far contributed more than $87 million to Trump’s campaign, according to the nonprofit political finance tracker OpenSecrets.
UCLA School of Law professor Richard Hasen, an NBC News election law analyst, said he didn’t think Musk’s PAC's program broke any campaign finance laws, since it doesn’t pay people directly to vote, register to vote, vote in a particular way or not vote.
The Cards Against Humanity website said it is “exploiting a legal loophole.” It also took aim at Musk directly, writing that registered swing-state voters could participate in his PAC's program and list Cards Against Humanity as their referrer — compelling Musk's PAC to send the company money.
“If you’re a registered voter in PA, GA, NV, AZ, NC, WI, or MI, just type your name into this dumb website for his PAC, put ‘MuskIsDumb@cah.lol’ as your referrer, and they’ll be legally obligated to pay us $47,” the Cards Against Humanity website said. “If he doesn’t pay up, we’ll sue him again.”
In September, Cards Against Humanity sued Musk's SpaceX for $15 million after, it said, the company trespassed on and damaged its Texas property, which the card game bought in 2017 with fan donations to stop Trump from building a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
