What do the Moldovan and American presidential elections have in common?

Voters in Moldova, a southeastern European country of 2.6 million sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, went to the polls on Sunday to vote in the country’s presidential election and referendum on proposed changes to the country’s Constitution aimed as enshrining Moldova’s commitment to joining the European Union.

Moldova’s current President, Maia Sandu, topped the election’s first round with 42% of the vote against her closest opponent, Aleksandre Stoianoglo, who is backed by the pro-Russian Socialist Party. Stoianoglo received 26% in Sunday’s vote. The two top vote-getters will face off in a run-off election on November 3.

Official data on more than 99.6% of the vote counted put ‘Yes’ in favor of the referendum by 50.46% to the ‘No’ camp’s 49.54%, as of Monday afternoon. Sandu had backed the referendum, while Stoianoglo opposed changing the Constitution.

Prior to the election, Moldovan authorities detected a massive influx of cash from Moldovans who had traveled to Moscow. Police and prosecutors seized US$1.5 million in one day alone. “Almost everyone had money: 2,000, 3,000, 7,000 euros,” the head of customs at Chisinau Airport, Ruslan Alexandrov, told the BBC.[1]

Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Veronica Dragalin, reported that she had never “seen such a brazen and open attempt to corrupt an election.” Her office had uncovered a pyramid payments scheme openly run from Russia by Ilan Shor, a Moldovan billionaire living in Moscow. By early October as many as 130,000 voters – or 10% of the electorate - had received payment, according to Viorel Cernauteanu, Moldova’s chief of police.

Offering money in return for votes is a crime in Moldova, punishable by a possible five-year prison sentence.

Shor fled Moldova in 2019 and was later convicted in absentia for money laundering and embezzlement. On the eve of the election, Shore described Sunday’s vote on the ‘X’ ?social media platform as “our last chance” to keep Moldova out of the European Union. Shor has also financed a disinformation campaign warning that the European Union wanted to brainwash children into turning gay or transgender. [2]

BBC reported evidence of vote-buying at a polling station for breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria along the Ukrainian border on Sunday. A women who had just dropped off her ballot asked an election monitor where she would get paid.? Asked directly by a BBC producer who overheard her question about payment, the woman freely admitted that she had been offered cash to vote.? She was angry that the man who sent her to the polling station was refusing her calls. “He tricked me” she said.[3]

In America, as voters cast early ballots in the presidential election which will conclude on November 5, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and owner of ‘X’, has pledged to give away $1 million every day in a lottery to a registered swing-state voter who has signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. So far, Musk has given away two such million-dollar prizes.

Some have questioned the legality of Musk’s scheme.

The U.S. Code of electoral law states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” faces a potential $10,000 fine or a five-year prison sentence, according to Paul Schiff Berman, the Walter S. Cox Professor of Law at the George Washington University.

Musk’s defenders say his lottery is open only to those who sign his petition. However, other parts of his scheme gives those who register voters in the battleground states cash rewards of $47 or, in the hotly contested State of Pennsylvania, $100.

Oligarchs are in both cases using their wealth to influence the outcome of their country’s elections.

[1] Sarah Rainsford (October 20, 2024). Russian cash-for-votes flows into Moldova as nation heads to polls. BBC. www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-cash-for-votes-flows-into-moldova-as-nation-heads-to-polls/ar-AA1sz0UU?ocid=BingNewsSerp

[2] Andrew Higgins (October 21, 2024). Moldovans, Very Narrowly, Choose to Look Toward Europe, Not Russia. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/world/europe/moldova-eu-referendum-vote-result.html

[3] Sarah Rainsford and Laura Gozzi (October 21, 2024). Moldova says ‘Yes’ to pro-EU constitutional changes by tiny margin. BBC. www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wnr5qdxe7o.amp