Donald Trump’s campaign may not be reaching the thousands of voters it hoped to reach in Arizona and Nevada, and leaked data and officials show that about a quarter of America Pac’s door knocks It has been reported that the solicitation app may be fraudulent. That problem.
With less than 20 days left until the election, where there is a growing view that the election will be determined by voter turnout, Trump and Kamala Harris remain in the race.The possibility of a fake door knock by canvassers pretending to have visited Trump’s home is a concern for Trump. This could lead to serious setbacks for Mr. .
Earlier this year, the Trump campaign outsourced much of its ground campaign to America Pac, a political action committee founded by Musk, spending millions of dollars to attract votes from Trump supporters, especially those who don’t normally vote. He bet that his profits would increase if he participated.
However, leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that about 24% of door knocks in Arizona and 25% of door knocks in Nevada this week were reported to have been reported by the Campaign Sidekick recruitment app as “unusual investigation logs.” It turned out that it was reported as “.
For example, data from Arizona shows that of the 35,692 doors hit by 442 Blitz Canvasing workers during Wednesday’s America Pac operation, 8,511 doors were flagged with abnormal inspection records. are.
The extent of flag doors in Americapac operations highlights the risks of outsourcing ground warfare programs. There, paid campaign workers are typically less invested in a candidate’s victory than volunteers or campaign staff.
Americapac denies that there was any actual fraud at that level in Arizona and Nevada, and declined to comment for this article’s reporting.
And a person familiar with America Pac’s activities said, “Sidekicks were never expected to be in charge of auditing America Pac’s door operations.” The reason PAC is so confident in its numbers is that each… This is due to the audit procedures in place by the soliciting company and the formal audit procedures of the PAC.”
But multiple people familiar with the Campaign Sidekick app, including a recent auditor for Blitz Canvassing and a senior executive at another vendor who has signed a non-disclosure agreement with America Pac, say anomalous activity logs can detect fraudsters. We agree that it is an effective tool.
For example, anomalous behavior records show a recruiter marked by GPS as sitting at Guayo’s on the Trail restaurant, half a mile from the door he was allegedly pushing in Grove City, Arizona. there were. Two blocks away from the apartment, another election participant was recorded marking a voter as “not home.”
Guardian also conducted its own tests to see if manually removing instances of “false positives” (doors incorrectly marked as fraudulent) indicated that logs of anomalous activity were too sensitive. did. Using a random sample of 26 recruiters in Arizona, the proportion of suspected fakes matched the overall proportion.
suspicious door
Trump’s campaign will outsource much of its ground campaign to political action committees this season after the Federal Election Commission for the first time allowed campaigns to coordinate turnout efforts with outside groups earlier this year. I took a gamble.
The campaign initially envisioned multiple packs to promote support for Trump, but America Pack ended up having a substantial presence, spending more than $29.8 million on field operations for Trump. As the only pack, it ended up being the largest and most ambitious of the outside groups. Every battleground state.
Other largest packs involved in fieldwork, such as Turning Point Action and America First Works, have smaller footprints. The Turning Point team in Wisconsin was later incorporated into the America Pac operation, two people familiar with the matter said.
As a result of significant investment, America Pac was able to record an astonishing number of door knocks in just a few months through a network of several vendors in each battleground state and dozens of subcontractors under those vendors. It’s done.
However, leaked data shows that as the total number of doorknocks increases in the final run-up to the election, so too do suspicions of fakes. On October 15th, 20.1% of Arizona doors had unusual activity logged. It rose to 23.8% on October 16th and reached 26.9% on October 17th.
The increase was also reflected in Nevada. On October 15th, 21.2% was reported in an unusual survey record, rising to 23.8% on October 16th and rising dramatically to 30.1% on October 17th.
Under normal circumstances, Cancer would walk up to the door of a home where someone who voted for President Trump lives. The researcher then navigates to the question list on the smartphone app and records their responses to the survey.
Unusual activity reports on the Campaign Sidekick app are automatically generated when a survey is filled out by a researcher located a short distance from the target voter’s home location.
The app has built-in tolerances, including how fast the recruiter in question is hitting the door and whether the response was recorded more than 100 feet from the target door. After considering the factors, an unusual research report is generated.
America Pac said the audit is being conducted by the vendor. In Arizona and Nevada, it is understood that Blitz Canvassing audits its numbers at least every five days, and if canvassers are found to be cheating, they are immediately fired and their walkbooks are Reassigned to another canvasser.
“America Pac’s field program is the most robust and effective outside recruitment effort ever, knocking on more people’s doors in isolated terrain than ever before.” said Pac’s vendors Blitz Canvassing, Echo Canyon, Synapse Group and Patriot Grassroots. said Campaign Sidekicks in a joint statement.
“Thanks to the rigorous auditing infrastructure each solicitor has in place to complement Campaign Sidekick’s powerful capabilities, we have complete confidence in the reliability of our door counts and are able to meet all of our door targets. We are on pace to exceed this,” he said in a statement.
However, the audit system used in Arizona and Nevada only works if fraudulent solicitors are caught quickly, which is not always the case. In one case, a recruiter worked for five days, apparently knocking on 796 doors, and was fired for blatant fraud only after all the doors were flagged as suspicious.
Part of the problem with paid solicitation in general is that the recruiter gets paid per door, so the more doors they knock on, the less motivated they are to fire the recruiter. If the door does not hit, the vendor is obligated to return the money to the client or owe that number of “free” doors.
America Pac has even more incentive for vendors to fire recruiters who may be committing fraud in only one in 10 cases, effectively cutting corners. This is because the supply of labor for recruiters is decreasing in the latter part of the cycle, making it difficult to hire replacements. Two people familiar with the situation said it was becoming increasingly difficult.
