The richest man in the world is trying to buy the U.S. presidential election in order to bestow it, like a burnt offering, upon his preferred candidate.

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk is not only pouring $75 million of his own money into Donald Trump’s campaign. He is now offering payments to voters in swing states in the form of a “lottery” that skirts, if not violates, U.S. election laws. What started out as $47 for registered voters in Pennsylvania who endorsed his on-line petition has become a million bucks a day from now until the election to some lucky signatory in a swing state. Federal law prohibits such incentives to register to vote, but the penalty is minimal (for Musk) and in any case wouldn’t be assessed until after the election.

A billionaire, in other words, has gone all in to support a billionaire on behalf of billionaires the world over.

This billionaires-for-billionaires approach certainly has precedents in the United States. Right-wing plutocrats famously rallied behind Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. But it’s Trump that billionaires have really glommed onto. For instance, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam were key donors in Trump’s earlier runs. Trump’s current transition co-chair, Howard Lutnick, is a billionaire financier.

A comparably blatant effort to buy an election has been on display in Moldova. In this tiny country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, billionaire Ilan Shor sent $15 million to 130,000 citizens in exchange for their pledge to vote against pro-EU leader Maia Sandu and a referendum on enshrining the goal of EU membership in the country’s constitution. In a particularly unappetizing form of repatriation, some of that payola comes from the billion dollars that Shor stole from three Moldovan banks in 2014.

A “robbing hood,” indeed.

Half of Moldova turned out to vote in this critical election. Some showed up at the polls thinking that they’d be paid immediately, according to the BBC:

Not only you, my dear.

The good news, in this out-and-out battle between billionaires and democracy, is that Shor failed. The referendum passed by the slenderest of margins (given the general popularity of the EU in that part of the world, the closeness of the vote was nonetheless sobering). And Sandu, the current president of the country, won the first round of voting convincingly with 41 percent, while Shor’s preferred candidate, the pro-Moscow Aleksandr Stoianoglo, garnered only 26 percent. Unfortunately, Sandu will face a united opposition in the second round.

Two elections this month in the former Soviet region—in Moldova and Georgia—showcase this war between wealth and commonwealth. The Russian-allied kleptocrats face off against the Europe-aligned democrats to see which way the post-Soviet space will turn. Ukraine, of course, is fighting an actual war along precisely those battle lines.

The Ukrainian scenario is the ultimate threat, even here in the United States. Democracy may well triumph over the billionaires in the U.S., Moldovan, and Georgian elections. But they will be Pyrrhic victories if the countries involved descend into the kind of armed conflict that Ukraine is currently experiencing.

Are you worried about how divided the United States is? It could be worse.

It could be Moldova.

In the early 1990s, a thin strip of the country tried to remain within the disintegrating Soviet Union, then launched a war of secession against the newly independent Moldovan government. The semi-autonomous “state” of Transnistria, where Russian is more commonly spoken than Romanian, emerged from a ceasefire agreement, and Russian “peacekeepers” are supposed to maintain the tenuous status quo. No UN member states recognize the “country” of Transnistria, and no legitimate governments appreciate the breakaway region’s anachronistic allegiance to a Soviet past and its current commitment to organized crime.

The Moldovan government faces another potential secessionist movement from the Gagauz, who speak a Turkic language and whose nationalism has brought them in alignment with the Kremlin. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has fostered close ties with Gagauz leader Evgenia Gutul to drive yet another wedge into Moldova.

In addition to supporting secessionist movements, the Kremlin has launched several other efforts to destabilize Moldova........

© Common Dreams