Several operatives and canvassers connected with Elon Musk backed America PAC have expressed their concern that the grassroots operation results may have been skewed – amid claims they were made to canvass during Hurricane Helene.
Nine operatives and canvassers spoke with NBC News on the condition of anonymity, said they were concerned about canvassers submitting large amounts of suspect data from their ground game operations. Canvasing is a key part of any campaign efforts in states that could be decided by a percentage point or less. They are normally charged with knocking on doors in swing states and using their smartphones to log data for the campaign. This data includes a survey voters are asked to fill out stating their voting intentions. This data can be crucial for the campaign to know where their efforts are succeeding and where they need to target further.
Normally, campaigns do this work themselves but following a model used by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during his bid for the White House in the Republican primaries, the Trump campaign farmed this ground game out to the Musk backed America PAC.
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The operatives and canvassers that spoke with NBC News range from on-the-ground canvases all the way up to senior PAC operatives. They say that a large amount of the data they have been receiving from key battleground states is “suspicious.” NBC News reviewed some of the data provided by the anonymous sources within the PAC and found that some data entries made by canvassers were made far from the home they were supposed to be knocking on and some were made while the canvaser was connected to WI-Fi. Both are signs that the door was not in fact knocked on and the data could be inaccurate, sources told NBC News.
A video that was widely circulated also showed canvassers how to “spoof” their location on their smartphones to make it look like that data was submitted near the home they were supposed to be at. Some of the data from Arizona and Nevada was leaked to the public last month and showed that potentially a quarter of door-knocks recorded into the PAC’s canvasing app may be fake, according to reporting from The Guardian.
High-ranking officials within the PAC responded to these reports of fake door-knocks with a joint statement to NBC News denying that the suspicious data was not hampering their ground-game efforts. In the statement, the officials pointed to in-house audits of the data of each of the companies working under the PAC’s umbrella employ.
Four companies work under the America PAC with various states assigned to their portfolios, Blitz Canvassing, Patriot Grassroots, Echo Canyon Consulting, and The Synapse Group.
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 to NBC News. We are fully confident in the authenticity of our door counts thanks to the rigorous auditing infrastructure each canvassing firm deploys to supplement Campaign Sidekicks strong capabilities, and we are on pace to exceed every single one of our door goals.
Beyond the potentially fake canvassing data, sources who spoke with NBC News described being forced to knock on doors in North Carolina while Hurricane Helene was barreling down on the state. Two canvassers who spoke with NBC News said they were made to knock on doors in North Carolina on Sept. 27, just as the worst of the storm was coming. The canvassers told the outlet they were part of a team assigned to knock on doors north of Charlotte in Iredell County. According to a text chain shared with NBC, the canvassers learned that morning of the 27th that they would be knocking on doors, and leadership during the Zoom call that morning said that the team could make phone calls instead of knocking on doors, but the canvasser said that their direct manager opted to knock on doors during the storm instead.
The second canvasser told NBC that “a lot of people quit” right after. Im knocking on peoples doors, this person said. Theyre looking at me like Im crazy.
NBC News reached out to the manager who instructed them to knock on doors during the storm for comment but did not hear back. A person familiar with the effort denied that anyone who was in the path of the storm was asked to go out and knock on doors.
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.
Musk has invested nearly $119 million into the America PAC.
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