Musk’s America Pac was warned its canvassers may have lied about door knocks

America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk that has led the ground game operation for Donald Trump’s campaign, was warned in September about increasing numbers of door knocks being flagged as potentially fraudulent, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The confrontation marked the first time that America Pac’s leadership became aware of the problem – canvassers falsely claiming to have knocked on doors – that has raised the possibility that thousands of Trump voters might not be reached by the field operation.

The question of whether Trump voters are being reached by the America Pac ground game effort has taken on significance in recent months given the race between the former president and Kamala Harris has remained extremely close, suggesting the result may hinge on voter turnout.

As America Pac rapidly sought to scale up its field operation on behalf of the Trump campaign in late fall, executives at some of the canvassing vendors contracted to knock on doors in battleground states observed that internal audit systems were increasingly flagging doors as suspicious.

The executives were seeing the uptick both through the “unusual activity logs” on the Campaign Sidekick software used by America Pac and their managers in the field spotting fraud by canvassers on door knocks teams across several states, including Pennsylvania.

By 24 September, the situation had so alarmed Drew Ryun, the chief executive of Sidekick, that he raised the issue via email with Musk’s newly hired political adviser Chris Young, a former national field director for the Republican National Committee, the people said.

Whether any changes were implemented as a result is unclear. A review of the unusual activity logs in Arizona and Nevada for instance showed that the percentage of potentially fraudulent doors remained constant in the period before and after Ryun’s missive, hovering around 20-25% with occasional spikes.

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America Pac has previously disputed that their doors were falling victim to its canvassers cheating their way through walkbooks, a problem that has dogged the paid canvassing industry for years, saying their audit program essentially prevented door knocks being faked.

But the Guardian has reported that tens of thousands of door knocks in Arizona and Nevada, for instance, remain dubious based on the unusual activity logs. In one instance, GPS data showed a canvasser sitting at a restaurant half a mile away from doors he was supposedly hitting in Arizona.

As a result of that reporting, America Pac moved to restrict access to the unusual activity logs and toggled off the feature for dozens of users, who promptly complained and ultimately had their user privileges restored, two of the people said.

The problem of suspicious door knocks in the America Pac field operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with traditional volunteers or campaign staff​.

With the Trump campaign targeting their low-propensity voters – Trump supporters who have not voted in several previous elections – the walkbooks have had what canvassers refer to as “bad turf”, where target doors are separated by particularly large distances that are tedious to complete.

Musk donated $75m to America Pac, according to federal disclosures. Roughly $37m has been spent on the ground game operation to drive the Trump vote, with the rest put towards digital and mail advertising for him, as well as for down-ballot Republican candidates.

The billionaire owner of SpaceX has also been trying to return Trump to the White House in other ways, notably through a petition that asks registered voters in battleground states to submit their address, phone number and emails in exchange for $47 and to enter a daily-$1m prize draw.

Some campaign finance lawyers and the US justice department have warned Musk that the America Pac petition offer is illegal as it amounts to paying people to register to vote in violation of federal law. America Pac has also been used by Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner.

Musk’s defenders say it is simply a contest open to registered voters; in theory, Democrats registered to vote in battleground states can complete the petition and have a chance to win the $1m lottery.