Lorn Tusk: The $1m Giveaway Was Random Until a Courtroom Needed It Not to Be, and Other Things I Learned From Settling

It was never a lottery

Two residents of Arizona sued me, in Austin, claiming my $1 million-a-day giveaway to swing-state voters was not random. I have settled both suits, for a sum I am not required to tell you. Naturally the headlines say this proves they were right. It proves they were early.

My lawyer told a court that the winners were not chosen by chance and that we knew exactly who would be announced before the announcement. Critics call this a contradiction. I call it disclosure, delivered in the one room where nobody was in a hurry to share it on the internet.

“'Random' is what you call a prize when you want people's data, and 'predetermined' is what you call it when a judge wants an explanation. Same million, two audiences, and I only paid one of them.”

Suitability beats luck

A lottery picks winners by luck. That is its flaw. Luck gives you a retired dentist in a town with no signal who has never once amplified anything. I wanted spokespeople, so we selected for suitability, paid them $1 million each, and called the payment a prize because 'signing bonus' tests poorly in the Midwest.

A court in Pennsylvania accepted this: the money was pay for work, not a prize. I am proud of that ruling. It is the first time a judge has certified that a million dollars can be a salary for a job the person was not told they had.

The petition was a job application

To enter, voters signed a petition and handed over their personal details. One plaintiff says she would never have done so had she known she was being treated as a marketing prop. This is the exact misunderstanding I am trying to correct. She was not a prop. She was a candidate for being a prop, which is a much more competitive status, and the petition was the applicant-tracking system.

Yes, the petition set no limits on what my PAC could do with the data it collected. People call that a loophole. I call it a growth-stage product with a flexible roadmap, much like the social platform I own, Z Corp, where policy is also finalised after it has been used.

The number stays secret for your protection

Last month a federal judge said I would have to testify. I now will not have to, which is a coincidence in the sense that most things are. A settlement that is sealed also spares everyone the awkwardness of learning what a word costs.

Consider the economics. Hundreds of thousands of verified, motivated, battleground-state contacts, for a daily $1 million plus an undisclosed legal bill. Marketing departments pay more for worse lists and then must listen to focus groups. I only had to listen to a judge, once, in writing.

Some will say I lied to voters. I say I told them a number and a mood. Both were accurate. The number was a million. The mood was 'random'. Moods are not warranties.