Trump advisor laments ground game in key swing state outsourced to 'a bunch of grifters'

30 October 2024

The 2024 election may end up coming down to just a few thousand ballots cast across a handful of hotly contested battleground states. And in one of those states, former President Donald Trump may be in deep trouble given the state of his get-out-the-vote efforts.

Wired magazine recently reported that in Michigan — which has 15 electoral votes up for grabs — Trump's ground operation has been largely outsourced to tech billionaire Elon Musk's "America PAC," rather than overseen by the GOP nominee's campaign. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee are spending large sums to get out the vote in the Mitten State, with Wired reporting that Michigan's Democratic Party has more than $5 million in the bank while their GOP counterpart is still deep in debt and unable to match Democrats dollar-for-dollar.

According to Wired, America PAC requires its canvassers to download Blitz Canvassing — an app that's not on either the Apple App Store or the Android Play Store. Musk's PAC also lacks a geo-tracking feature, requiring users to depend on so-called "offline walkbooks" that aren't always kept up-to-date. The outlet also reported that a separate app Trump's canvassers use for their ground game called 10xVotes that "requires users to enter search queries for people they know, rather than providing them with a list of contacts."

"I think it’s what happens when you let a bunch of grifters take over,” an unnamed "Trumpworld source" given anonymity to speak candidly told Wired. “S— is always gonna produce s—.”

The Guardian reported earlier this month that America PAC is also playing a key role in the Trump campaign's voter outreach in Sun Belt states like Arizona and Nevada, with mixed results. According to the publication, roughly 25% of all door-knocking done by America PAC canvassers has been flagged as potentially fraudulent.

"The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs," wrote Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell. "The unusual activity logs, for instance, showed a canvasser who was marked by GPS as sitting at a Guayo’s On the Trail restaurant half a mile away from the doors he was supposedly hitting in Globe, Arizona. Another canvasser was recorded marking voters as 'not home' two blocks away from that apartment."

This is a stark difference from NGP VAN, which is the primary voter outreach software used by Democratic campaigns. NGP VAN's MiniVAN program is capable of producing detailed lists on voters that include not only their address and party registration, but also the last election in which they voted, whether they vote in primaries, their occupation, the number of residents in a given household and other important data.

Musk — who also owns X (formerly Twitter) — has used his ownership of the platform to suppress NGP VAN, according to a 2023 TechCrunch report. When a user attempted to share an NGP VAN link on the platform, X wouldn't allow the post to go through, saying the link "has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful."

Meanwhile America PAC's data collection efforts on Mitten State voters has been flagged as suspicious by Michigan Secretary of state Jocelyn Benson. Michigan's top elections official said she is investigating Musk's PAC for a reported redirect in which voters who enter ZIP codes for competitive areas are sent to a page that requests highly detailed information, like cell phone number and home address.

Click here to read Wired's full article (subscription required).

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