Trump’s $1 million voter fraud bounty won’t pay out — but may pay off for him: After months of ignoring the cost-of-living crisis, President Donald Trump has a novel plan to help struggling Americans: find some voter fraud. “Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!” the president wrote Monday afternoon on Truth Social.
Let’s be clear up front: It is highly unlikely that anybody will be collecting on this bounty anytime soon. At best, it is another desperate attempt from Trump to win over voters by throwing free money at them. But the gambit combines with the administration’s other preemptive efforts to muddy the midterm results in a far more concerning way.
In typically Trumpian fashion, the details of such a potentially consequential policy are basically nonexistent. “I’m also going to be issuing a $1 million bonus or reward, or whatever you want to call it, for anybody that reports voter fraud, leading to the arrest and conviction of somebody,” Trump told reporters a few hours after posting. “We’re giving that person $1 million.”
Let’s be clear up front: It is highly unlikely that anybody will be collecting on this bounty anytime soon.
From where will this, in theory, one or more million dollars be drawn? No idea, because as The Washington Sun noted, the “current Republican-led Congress has not yet authorized any sort of funding pool for a voter-fraud reporting rewards initiative, and if Democrats take back either chamber, it’s unlikely that a program would be authorized.” Election expert Rick Hasen told the Sun that the initiative is likely “part of a larger project on the part of Donald Trump to generate distrust of the election system by touting election fraud as some kind of problem.”
Voter fraud itself is exceedingly rare, as experts have shouted repeatedly for years. Trump and his allies falsely claim that Democrats have orchestrated en masse voting by noncitizens. They’ve never provided any proof. In 2020, Trump’s own campaign even… https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-million-dollar-bounty-voter-fraud