Inside Elon Musk’s high-stakes pro-Trump door-knocking effort
Nine Republican operatives and canvassers connected to the Elon Musk-backed America PAC told NBC News that they’re worried the high-profile grassroots operation on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential bid may hamper his chances in states decided by slim margins.
America PAC has been tasked with much of the pro-Trump canvassing operation as his campaign focuses its efforts on a more limited effort targeting so-called low-propensity voters. In turn, the Musk-backed organization is going door to door in all of the major swing states to help turn out Trump supporters and have them fill out surveys about their voting intentions.
But the people who spoke to NBC News, many of whom have years of experience in GOP field operations, said the operation may not be the well-oiled machine many in the party might hope it is, especially considering how much money is behind the effort.
In particular, they raised concerns about canvassers’ submitting an inordinate amount of suspect data. That data, some of which NBC News has reviewed, includes entries submitted far from the home or while canvassers are logged into Wi-Fi networks — telltale signs that a door was not knocked on, sources said. In addition, a video explaining how to “spoof” one’s location while submitting data drew attention in Nevada and Arizona, raising further concerns.
“I know it’s been flagged for America PAC that this has been transpiring,” an operative formerly on the effort said.
As some of that data spilled into public view last month, an operative close to the effort said: “All hell has broken loose” inside the PAC.
Elon Musk attends a rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., on Oct. 5.
The super PAC denied that the suspicious entries were debilitating the effort. America PAC provided a statement signed by leaders at all of the major canvassing vendors working under its umbrella, as well as the head of its data platform, that disputed concerns over their data, pointing to in-house auditing programs each company employs.
“Despite the lies being peddled by anonymous sources with agendas and a lack of knowledge of the facts, the America PAC field program is the most robust and effective outside canvassing effort ever, knocking on more doors with more people in more isolated terrain than has ever been done before,” Drew Ryun of Campaign Sidekick, Chris Turner of Patriot Grassroots, Jefferson Thomas of Synapse Group, Josh Penry of Blitz Canvassing and Jon Seaton of Echo Canyon Consulting said in a joint statement. “We are fully confident in the authenticity of our door counts thanks to the rigorous auditing infrastructure each canvassing firm deploys to supplement Campaign Sidekick’s strong capabilities, and we are on pace to exceed every single one of our door goals.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
‘There’s going to be hell to pay’
This election cycle is the first in which so much of a presidential nominee’s get-out-the-vote effort and field operation have been outsourced to a super PAC — a model that was attempted during Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ primary bid and is being replicated now for Trump. Many of those operatives who helmed DeSantis’ operation are now in charge at Musk’s super PAC, which is backed in part by roughly $119 million in investments from him.
Door-to-door canvassing, a major component of what is known as the “ground game,” can make a difference in elections that are determined by 1 percentage point or less. With this election shaping up as one in which many and potentially all of the seven major swing states could be decided by that tight margin, the Musk-backed effort could be at the front of the line for plaudits should he win — or topping the list of reasons he lost.
Those who spoke with NBC News ranged from on-the-ground canvassers to mid-level managers to senior operatives close to the PAC. They were granted anonymity to offer candid assessments and provide information without imperiling their professional prospects.
“There are enough bodies on the ground that there could still be, I think, a modicum of success,” the operative close to the effort said. “Maybe not quite the resounding success that Elon Musk was hoping he was investing in, but I do think that you can do a lot over” the final sprint.
In recent weeks, America PAC’s full canvassing portfolio has been divided among four firms: Blitz Canvassing, Patriot Grassroots, Echo Canyon Consulting and The Synapse Group, with each having certain states in its portfolio. Those groups, as is often the case in the paid canvassing universe, also subcontract out to other firms to take on part of their assignments.
Elon Musk speaks at a town hall on Oct. 20 in Pittsburgh.
The firm with the largest portfolio is Blitz, which oversees operations in Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina. Through late October, America PAC had spent upward of $54 million on Blitz’s services, according to Federal Election Commission filings — more than the PAC has on the three other vendors combined. Phil Cox, who is heading the PAC, is also connected to Blitz. America PAC ended its relationships this summer with two other prominent GOP-aligned canvassing firms that were knocking on doors as part of its effort.
The operative close to the effort added that if several of the key swing states “come down to 10, 15, 20,000 voters, or even less, and it turns out” many of the voters Blitz was aiming to contact were not reached, “man, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Faulty data can mess up a candidate’s get-out-the-vote effort by giving a false impression of where it needs to target or who is or is not a supporter. Such cheating has been an issue in GOP survey and turnout operations for years, and canvassing insiders acknowledge that some level of fraud by canvassers takes place on virtually any effort in both parties.
Yet operatives working on the America PAC effort, some of whom had experience working in races over the last few cycles, when canvassing operations were similarly plagued by suspicious entries, said the amount of flagged data surpassed even what they experienced then.
Data reviewed by NBC News from Campaign Sidekick, the app America PAC’s door-knockers are using as they canvass, showed what sources described as an inordinate number of potentially suspicious data entries filed in recent weeks.
In Arizona, nearly a quarter of data entries submitted in early- to mid-October were flagged in the app’s “unusual activity” log. That trigger automatically fires when door-knockers submit entries more than 100 feet away from the homes they are marking off, or if their locations are marked as a flat “zero” feet away from the homes, which occurs when the app is connected to Wi-Fi — which, in most instances, should not be the case for door-knockers walking around outside. In Nevada, more than 46,000 suspicious doors were entered into the system from Oct. 12 to Oct. 19.
A person familiar with the effort said the PAC has a “random audit program” to guard against fraud, adding, “Everyone gets an eyeball every few days.”
“The PAC uses other analytical tools to identify potential anomalies and then issues physical audits off of the forensic audit,” this person said, adding that canvassers are routinely fired for not doing the work or for fraudulently submitting data.
What’s more, this person said, Campaign Sidekick “isn’t meant to be a fraud auditing app, and the PAC doesn’t use it as such.”
Elon Musk joins former President Donald Trump during a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Oct. 5.
“The reason the PAC is confident in its door metrics is because of the robust in-person and forensic auditing efforts each of its four canvassing firms deploy,” this person said.
How to cheat: ‘You want to make it look realistic’
There’s also a video that has rocketed around the canvassing world in recent weeks featuring a person demonstrating how to use a location-spoofing app to cheat in America PAC’s app. As part of the demonstration, the person submitted faulty data for two people in Nevada. A source with access to America PAC’s back end confirmed to NBC News that those names were actually entered into the system — and were not initially flagged as suspicious, given that the location spoofing app placed the user close to the person’s home.
NBC News, which received the video from two separate Republican operatives, has not confirmed who created it. The person familiar with the effort said Blitz was able to identify the person in question by comparing data offered in the video with the back end of Campaign Sidekick and immediately fired the person on Sept. 30. The source said the canvasser in question submitted the data on Aug. 29, before Blitz had taken over the Nevada portfolio.
“As our auditing team came online, the individual in question, hired in this first hiring wave, was quickly identified and fired for spoofing,” this person said. “Our anti-spoofing and anti-fraud systems are industry-leading, and the termination of the individual in question is simply proof.”
In a separate statement, Turner, Thomas, Penry and Seaton addressed their capabilities for rooting out door data that has been submitted through location spoofing.
“The low propensity turnout programs are working, and early voting in the battleground states proves it,” they said, pointing to an increased share of Republicans in the early vote in key states. “Every door that is marked leaves unique fingerprints, and the fingerprints of a door marked with a spoofing app leave these fingerprints in neon colors. We have tech-enabled auditing and fraud prevention tools to identify and dismiss the bad apples, the client doesn’t pay a dime, and the door gets knocked by the next canvasser.”
In the video, the person who offered the step-by-step guide to cheating said he baselessly fills out the door-to-door survey on voters’ behalf as being supportive of Trump and that they will vote early. GOP canvassing operatives said a further issue with door-knockers cheating is that the fake results they submit will most often be favorable to the client they are knocking for.
“This is what I do. I put ‘Definitely Yes’ [for if they plan to vote]. ‘Donald Trump.’ ‘Early vote.’ … End survey,” the man doing the demonstration says in the video. “So it’s pretty much that simple. You just keep bouncing between houses. And you don’t want to go too fast. You want to make it look realistic. I’d say it’s 30 to 40 seconds [for] each house.”
The video, which was first reported by The Guardian, raised fears that even the data reviewed by NBC News may have understated the level of potentially fraudulent door-knocking entries, sources said.
In response to NBC News, another person familiar with the effort dismissed the concerns and said the America PAC canvassing effort “is a well-oiled machine, and all you have to do is look at early returns in battleground states to see the impact Elon is having.”
“But this program is high-demand and hard work; it’s not for everyone,” this person said. “There is no patience for the hucksters and prima donnas who are lying to the press because they couldn’t hang with those of us working hard every day.”
Elsewhere, field organizers have suggested they will not be able to hit the door-knocking targets they have set. In Wisconsin, Alysia McMillan, a former state House candidate in Arizona who knocked for the PAC in multiple states before the group fired her, shared audio she recorded that was first shared with Reuters from an Oct. 8 training session in Wisconsin. During that session, a manager warned they were not going to be able to reach their goals. (The first person familiar with the effort said the PAC will outperform its metrics laid out in July in every state.)
“I haven’t seen it in writing, so I’ve heard some people say 450,000 doors we have to knock from the 17th of September to Election Day,” the manager said in the recording, adding, “We’re not going to hit 450,000, not with what we’ve got right now.”
Knocking on doors in a storm
As data issues started to pop up, the super PAC was also dealing with a very different storm — Hurricane Helene. Two canvassers who spoke with NBC News said they were made to knock in North Carolina as the storm rolled in on Sept. 27. Those canvassers said they were part of a team that was assigned to hit doors in Iredell County, north of Charlotte, as Helene, then a tropical storm, was barreling down on the state.
One canvasser, who also shared a text chain from that day with their team, relayed that they learned they would be knocking after a Zoom meeting that morning in which leadership said canvassers could make calls instead of canvass — but that their direct manager opted to go door to door, instead.
“If I go into the troubles that we went through just getting into the field, working, I’m talking about soggy literature, right?” this person said. “Ponchos on ponchos.”
“It was very bad,” this person added.
Weather and news reports from that day showed that multiple inches of rain fell, thousands of people lost power, trees fell, and roads were obstructed.
The second canvasser said “a lot of people quit” right after that episode.
“I’m knocking on people’s doors,” this person said. “They’re looking at me like I’m crazy.”
The manager who the sources said assigned them to knock that day did not respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, the first person familiar with the effort denied that any canvassers in the path of the storm were told to go door-knocking on Sept. 27, saying the PAC announced on the Zoom call that canvassers would be making phone calls rather than go door to door.
“Virtually the entire team was on the phones in the morning, but as weather allowed, a number of canvassers notified us they wanted to canvass,” this person said. “Safety was always emphasized, with the team being instructed to stay inside if there was any question.”
The second person familiar with the effort hit back against those claims, too, saying there was “not a chance” anyone was made to knock that day.
Both canvassers and GOP operatives who spoke with NBC News said they were sharing the information not to hinder the pro-Trump effort but to save it, adding they were growing concerned it could hurt Trump’s election chances.
“We’re there for Trump,” a canvasser said, adding, “We were doing what we had to do for the passion of it.”
As NBC News detailed last year, GOP-aligned canvassing efforts have been afflicted with some of those issues for years. Donors have eagerly funded such efforts, which bring in millions to canvassing firms. But Republicans who spoke with NBC News, even those who expressed serious concerns, said that when they are done right, field operations are very important to campaigns and can make the difference in razor-thin elections.
David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said on CNN last month that door-to-door canvassing “is going to be more important in this presidential race than any one I can remember in recent memory.”
Some of the people who spoke to NBC News noted that Musk himself is relatively new to the political arena — as are many of the young canvassers working on the operation — which has frustrated some of the more experienced operatives.
“I don’t even know where some of these people came from. Some of these people came straight out of the comments of the Nelk Boys YouTube channel,” an operative aligned with the PAC said, referring to the pro-Trump influencers. “These are, like, broccoli-cut Zoomers.”
The operative formerly on the effort described a “shock wave” reverberating around the universe of operatives and canvassers currently or at one time close to the PAC as more information about the canvassing effort was made public over the last 10 days.
“Elon Musk is brilliant at what Elon Musk does,” this person said. “You would never ask a political consultant to build rocket ships. I don’t think you should be asking someone that builds rocket ships to manage political operations when they don’t 100% understand what they’re looking for.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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