Elon Musk’s America PAC has Republican operatives more than a little concerned about Donald Trump’s ground game.
Nine Republican operatives and canvassers seemed alarmed about issues with the super PAC, which has reportedly collected a plethora of faked canvassing data, NBC News reported Friday.
As the PAC’s phony canvassing numbers were revealed, an operative close to the effort told NBC that “all hell has broken loose” inside the America PAC.
The PAC has reportedly received a large quantity of suspicious data from its canvassers, following reports that some had learned how to spoof their location to create the impression that they’d visited voters’ homes.
Earlier this month, data leaks revealed that roughly 24 percent of door-knocks in Arizona and 25 percent of door-knocks in Nevada in a single week had been flagged as “unusual,” an internal metric used to indicate fake door-knocks. America PAC has spent more than $54 million on its vendor in those states, Blitz Canvassing, which is also organizing efforts in Michigan and North Carolina. Blitz Canvassing is one of four vendors employed by the PAC.
The PAC has pushed back on reports that fake canvassing was impeding Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort.
America PAC has also reportedly engaged in dubious treatment of its canvassers. Two canvassers anonymously told NBC News they were made to knock on doors outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, as Hurricane Helene rolled in on September 27. One of them said that their direct manager told them to go door to door, despite leadership instructing them to make calls instead.
"If I go into the troubles that we went through just getting into the field, working, I’m talking about soggy literature, right?” the canvasser told NBC News. “Ponchos on ponchos.”
“It was very bad,” they added.
The second canvasser said that many canvassers quit after that experience.
In Michigan, some canvassers funded by America PAC were reportedly given unrealistically high expectations, under extremely poor working conditions. They claimed that they were threatened financially if they performed poorly. Canvassers said that they’d been misled by the PAC and a video showed that they’d been carted around in the back of a U-Haul, instead of the rental cars they were promised. One canvasser even said they were surprised to learn that they were canvassing on behalf of Trump.
Trump’s allies have practically begged the former president to ditch Musk, and his malfunctioning canvassing efforts, as conservative activists and leaders in battleground states reported that they’ve seen little return from the America PAC’s efforts.
No I mean like, is this normal in america or what? To pay canvassers? It's really weird to me that you'd have people that might not even care about what they're canvassing for doing this as they could easily sabotage.
another of my million previous jobs was as a paid canvasser! AMA.
overview that might answer basic questions: I did door-to-door for a lib environmental org back in the early 00s. we worked on local issues and would encourage residents to sign petitions, ask them to rewrite a model letter of concern in their own words (which I would collect at the the of the evening as I walked back through the neighborhood to my dropoff/pickup point), and ask them to contribute financially. my salary was directly tied to my fundraising numbers. everybody at every level of the org did fundraising – the bulk of the org's money came from the grant-writing and glad-handing that office- and regional managers would do.
edit: we also did community volunteer work related to the issues each region was working on. one of the activities I participated in was cleaning the gutters of people living near an industrial facility, so we could have the stuff we pulled out tested to see if it was the same deadly shit coming out of the company's smokestacks. (it was.) I still remember it very vividly – mixed in with the usual leaf litter and whatnot was a copious amount of silvery-grey particulate matter. I think part of the goal was getting proof for the class-action lawsuit some of the residents were trying to do too? idk, I'll try to remember enough details to dig up a news article or press release or something.
Did you ever canvass for anything you fundamentally disagreed with? Or did anyone else at the company?
I never did personally, can't speak for anyone else. we were working on making legislators (who had been bought off the corporations polluting these communities) give a shit about the ways their constituents were being affected by pollution the whole time I worked there
Oh I did something similar in London but it wasn't canvassing, we were monitoring air pollution levels and doing it outside every single address, bit by bit. Mapped out air pollution down to a house by house level and proved the link between traffic pollution and health. It contributed to a lot of the traffic calming measures and fees that now affect london traffic.
All the work we did shouldn't have been necessary, the link was obvious, but without making things impossible to deny you can never do anything that might hurt capital.
We probably saved actual lives with that one so I'm pretty proud of contributing.
yeah, it was one of my favorite jobs because of that feeling of contribution. there were a couple houses where I cleaned the gutters of people who really thought we were tree-hugger wackos but hey free gutter cleaning, except I could tell the talk about their neighbors being sick and wanting to find evidence to hold that big company accountable actually gave them some pause. 🤷 cleaning someone's gutters is a small price to pay to make them rethink their situation and reconsider their best interests, if only for a moment.
The thing I do with people as often as possible is remind them to ask themselves "how will this benefit my life?"
Most people are not acting with thought about themselves in mind, they are simply acting on the will of the information sphere surrounding them. Pushing them to do this can in fact reshape their political decisions.
I try to remind people that they should be doing this as often as possible, about everything. It helps.
I really like that strategy ❤️
I only ever had a Bloomberg canvasser come to my door. I have to imagine he was paid