Card game maker offers money for voting plans, insulting Trump

Former President Donald Trump’s Campaign Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told WORLD on Friday that the card game manufacturer’s efforts were irrelevant. The company behind the provocative game Cards Against Humanity this week offered up to $100 for people to make plans to vote in the upcoming election. To participate, people had to be eligible to vote—but not in a swing state—and to not have voted in the 2020 election. To receive the payout, voters had to apologize for not voting in the last presidential election, make a plan to vote in this upcoming presidential election, and insult Trump on social media, the company said.

Is that even legal? On social media, the company insisted its activity was legal, but said that it shouldn’t be. Cards Against Humanity claimed it was exploiting a loophole in federal laws protecting election integrity. It encouraged voters to take advantage of it before the laws changed. The company said it had paid more than 1,700 voters through this system as of Friday. WORLD reached out to the Federal Election Commission’s Chairman and Vice Chairwoman for confirmation about the legality of the maneuver but did not immediately receive responses from either of them. 

Cards Against Humanity also recently criticized tech billionaire Elon Musk, acting through his America PAC, for offering to pay voters in certain states $47 if they got a fellow registered voter to sign a petition supporting the U.S. Constitution’s First and Second Amendments. Cards Against Humanity encouraged voters in the states where Musk’s petition applied to sign it and list the company as their referrer—which Cards Against Humanity said would legally obligate Musk to pay it $47 per voter.

I’m not familiar with this game. The board game, which debuted in 2011, prompts players to fill in the blanks of sentences to make off-color or shocking statements. It was originally designed for adults but has since debuted an edition marketed toward families.

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta’s report in The Stew about court battles that could alter the landscape of voting methods for the 2024 presidential election.