Nine Republican operatives and canvassers affiliated with the Elon Musk-backed America PAC told News they worry that the high-profile grassroots operation on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential bid could hurt his chances in states decided by narrow margins.
America PAC has been tasked with handling much of the pro-Trump campaign, as his campaign focuses on a more limited effort targeting so-called low-propensity voters. In turn, the Musk-backed organization is going door-to-door in key swing states to mobilize 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 hope, especially given the amount of money behind the effort.
In particular, they expressed concern that canvassers are submitting an excessive amount of suspicious data. That data, some of which News reviewed, includes submissions made far from home or while canvassers were logged into Wi-Fi networks — telltale signs that a door wasn’t knocked on, sources said. In addition, a video explaining how to “spoof” your location while submitting data attracted attention in Nevada and Arizona, raising further concerns.
“I know it’s been reported to America PAC that this has happened,” said an official previously involved in the effort.
When some of that data became public last month, an official close to the effort said, “All hell broke loose” inside the PAC.
The super PAC denied that the suspicious listings undermined its efforts. America PAC issued a statement signed by leaders of all the major canvassing vendors operating under its umbrella, as well as the head of its data platform, denying the concerns about its data, citing internal auditing programs that each company uses.
“Despite the lies spread by anonymous sources with agendas and a lack of knowledge of the facts, America PAC’s field program is the most robust and effective external canvassing effort ever, knocking on more doors with more people in more isolated terrain than ever 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 confident that our door counts are authentic thanks to the rigorous audit infrastructure that each recruitment agency deploys to complement Campaign Sidekick’s strong capabilities, and we are on track to exceed each of our door count goals.”
Trump’s 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 candidate’s get-out-the-vote efforts and field operation have been outsourced to a super PAC — a model tried during Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida primary and now being replicated for Trump. Many of the operatives who ran DeSantis’ operation now run Musk’s super PAC, which is backed in part by about $119 million in investments from him.
Door-to-door campaigning, a key component of what’s known as the “ground game,” can make a difference in elections decided by 1 percentage point or less. With this election shaping up to be one in which many, and possibly all, of the seven major swing states could be decided by that narrow margin, the Musk-backed effort could be at the front of the line for accolades if he wins — or at the top of the list of reasons he lost.
Those who spoke to NBC News ranged from canvassers on the ground to mid-level managers to senior staff close to the PAC. They were granted anonymity to provide candid assessments and information without jeopardizing their professional prospects.
“There are enough people on the ground that there can still be, I think, some success,” said the staffer close to the effort. “Maybe not quite the resounding success that Elon Musk was hoping for, but I do think you can do a lot to make” the final sprint.
In recent weeks, America PAC’s entire canvassing portfolio has been split among four companies: Blitz Canvassing, Patriot Grassroots, Echo Canyon Consulting and The Synapse Group, each with specific states in its portfolio. Those groups, as is often the case in the paid canvassing universe, also subcontract to other companies to fulfill some of their assignments.
The firm with the largest portfolio is Blitz, which oversees operations in Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina. Through the end of October, America PAC had spent more than $54 million on Blitz’s services, according to Federal Election Commission filings — more than the PAC spent on its three other vendors combined. Phil Cox, who directs the PAC, is also affiliated with Blitz. America PAC this summer ended relationships with two other prominent GOP-oriented election agencies that knocked on doors as part of its effort.
The aide close to the effort added that if several of the key swing states “go down to 10, 15, 20,000 voters, or even less, and it turns out that ‘a lot of the voters that Blitz wanted to reach were not reached,’ man, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Incorrect data can derail a candidate’s campaign to get out the vote by giving the wrong impression about where to target or who is or isn’t a supporter. Such fraud has been a problem in GOP polling and turnout operations for years, and campaign insiders acknowledge that campaign fraud has been a feature of virtually every campaign in both parties.
Still, campaign staffers at America PAC, some of whom had experience working races in the past few cycles when campaigners were similarly plagued by suspicious submissions, said the volume of data flagged was even greater than what they were seeing then.
Data reviewed by NBC News from Campaign Sidekick, the app that America PAC’s door-to-door operatives use during their campaigns, showed what sources described as an inordinate number of potentially suspicious data submissions made in recent weeks.
In Arizona, nearly a quarter of data submissions made in early to mid-October were flagged in the app’s “unusual activity” log. That trigger is automatically activated when door knockers are more than 100 feet away from the homes they’re marking, or if their locations are marked as a flat “zero” foot away from the homes, which happens when the app is connected to Wi-Fi — which in most cases shouldn’t 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 prevent fraud, adding, “Everyone gets a look every few days.”
“The PAC uses other analytical tools to identify potential anomalies and then issues physical audits based on the forensic audit,” the person said, adding that canvassers are routinely fired for not doing the job or for submitting fraudulent data.
Additionally, this person said that Campaign Sidekick “is not intended to be a fraud auditing app, and the PAC is not using it as such.”
“The reason the PAC is confident in its door statistics is because of the robust in-person and forensic auditing efforts that each of its four canvassing firms employs,” the person said.
How to cheat: ‘You want to make it look realistic’
There’s also a video that’s been making waves in the campaign world in recent weeks, in which someone demonstrates how to use a location-spoofing app to commit fraud on America PAC’s app. As part of the demonstration, the person submitted false information for two people in Nevada. A source with access to America PAC’s back end confirmed to NBC News that those names were indeed entered into the system — and were not initially flagged as suspicious, since the location-spoofing app placed the user near the person’s home.
NBC News, which received the video from two separate Republican staffers, has not confirmed who created the video. The person familiar with the effort said Blitz was able to identify the person in question by comparing the data in the video to Campaign Sidekick’s back end and promptly fired the person on Sept. 30. The source said the campaigner in question submitted the data on Aug. 29, before Blitz took over the Nevada portfolio. “When our audit team came online, the individual in question, hired in this first wave of hiring, was quickly identified and terminated for spoofing,” the person said. “Our anti-spoofing and anti-fraud systems are industry-leading, and the termination of the individual in question is simply testament to that.”
In a separate statement, Turner, Thomas, Penry and Seaton discussed their ability to root out door records submitted through location spoofing.
“The low-turnout programs work, and early voting in swing states is proof of that,” the person said, noting a higher share of Republicans in early voting in key states. “Every door that’s marked leaves unique fingerprints, and the fingerprints of a door that’s marked with a spoofing app leave those fingerprints in neon colors. We have technology-driven auditing and fraud prevention tools to identify the bad apples and fire them, the customer doesn’t pay a dime, and the door gets knocked on by the next canvasser.”
In the video, the person offering the step-by-step guide to cheating said he’s baselessly filling out the door-to-door survey on behalf of voters to support Trump and that they’ll vote early. GOP campaigners said another problem with door-to-door voters cheating is that the false results they submit are usually favorable to the customer they’re knocking on behalf of.
“That’s what I do. I put ‘Definitely Yes’ [for when they’re planning to vote]. ‘Donald Trump.’ ‘Vote early.’ … End of survey,” the man doing the demonstration says in the video. “So it’s really that simple. You just keep jumping back and forth between houses. And you don’t want to go too fast. You want to make it look realistic. I would say it’s 30 to 40 seconds [for] each house.”
The video, first reported by The Guardian, raised concerns that even the data reviewed by NBC News may have underestimated the level of potentially fraudulent door-to-door submissions, sources said.
In response to NBC News, another person familiar with the effort dismissed the concerns, saying that the America PAC campaign “is a well-oiled machine, and you only have to look at the early results in the swing states to see the impact Elon is having.”
“But this program is very popular and hard work; it’s not for everyone,” the person said. “There is no patience for the quacks and prima donnas who lie to the press because they can’t get along with those of us who work hard every day.”
Elsewhere, field organizers have suggested that they won’t be able to meet the door-to-door goals they’ve set. In Wisconsin, Alysia McMillan, a former Arizona House candidate who had canvassed for the PAC in multiple states before the group fired her, shared audio she recorded and first shared with Reuters of an Oct. 8 training session in Wisconsin. During that session, a manager warned that they wouldn’t be able to meet their goals. (The first person familiar with the effort said the PAC would exceed the July-set stats in every state.)
“I haven’t seen it in print, so I’ve heard people say we need to knock on 450,000 doors from September 17th to Election Day,” the manager said in the recording, adding, “We’re not going to get to 450,000, not with what we have now.”
Knocking on doors in a storm
As the data issues arose, the super PAC was also dealing with a very different storm: Hurricane Helene. Two canvassers who spoke to NBC News said they had to knock on doors in North Carolina when the storm hit on Sept. 27. Those canvassers said they were part of a team assigned to knock on doors in Iredell County, north of Charlotte, as Helene, then a tropical storm, barreled toward the state.
One canvasser, who also shared a text chain from that day with his team, said they learned they would be knocking on doors after a Zoom meeting that morning in which leadership said canvassers could call instead of canvassing, but their direct manager opted to go door-to-door instead.
“When I talk about the issues we had when we went out in the field and were working, I’m talking about soaked literature, right?” this person said. “Ponchos on ponchos.”
“It was really bad,” the person added.
Weather and news reports from that day showed several inches of rain falling, thousands of people without power, trees falling, and roads blocked.
The second canvasser said “a lot of people quit” immediately after the event.
“I’m knocking on people’s doors,” the person said. “They look at me like I’m crazy.”
The manager who 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 canvassers had to go door-to-door near the storm on Sept. 27, saying the PAC announced during the Zoom call that canvassers would be calling instead of going door-to-door.
“Almost the entire team was on the phone in the morning, but when the weather allowed, a couple of canvassers let us know they wanted to go canvassing,” the person said. “Security was emphasized at all times, with the team instructed to stay inside if there were any questions.”
The second person familiar with the campaign also pushed back against those claims, saying there was “no chance” anyone would come knocking that day.
Both canvassers and GOP operatives who spoke to NBC News said they shared the information not to hamper the pro-Trump campaign but to save it, adding that they were growing concerned it could hurt Trump’s chances of election.
“We’re here for Trump,” one canvasser said, adding, “We did what we had to do out of passion.”
As News detailed last year, GOP-aligned campaigns have been plagued by some of those problems for years. Donors have eagerly funded such campaigns, generating millions for campaign offices. But Republicans who spoke to NBC News, even those who voiced serious concerns, said that the groundwork, done right, is incredibly important to campaigns and can make a difference in close 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 I can remember in recent memory.”
Some people who spoke to 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 are coming from. Some of these people came straight out of the comments on the Nelk Boys YouTube channel,” said one PAC official, referring to the pro-Trump influencers. “These are, like, broccoli-cut Zoomers.”
The operative who previously worked on the campaign described a “shockwave” that reverberated through the universe of operatives and canvassers currently or once close to the PAC as more information about the campaign became public over the past 10 days.
“Elon Musk is brilliant at what Elon Musk does,” this person said. “You would never ask a political consultant to build rockets. I don’t think you should ask someone who builds rockets to run political operations if they don’t 100% understand what they’re looking for.”