Elon Musk leaps on stage with Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally from behind bullet resistant glass at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds on October 05, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Canvassers and paid door knockers for the campaign of former President Donald Trump say they were tricked into coming to Michigan by a company associated with Elon Musk’s America political action committee, and then stiffed with hotel bills if they didn’t reach certain quotas.
Those are the allegations revealed in an article published Wednesday by the tech-focused WIRED magazine, which included accusations that the canvassers worked under poor, and seemingly illegal, circumstances such as being driven to areas of Michigan in the back of a rental truck with no seats or safety restraints.
The company in question, Blitz Canvassing, is a subcontractor of Musk’s America PAC, which the tech billionaire created to help Trump regain the White House.
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America PAC is already being investigated by the Michigan secretary of state’s office over its efforts to collect voter data in battleground states, accused of soliciting detailed personal information about voters under the guise of helping to get them registered to vote.
The Michigan Advance reached out to America PAC’s email for comment but received back a generic response encouraging people to apply for positions. WIRED said that neither Musk nor the PAC responded for its story.
Requests for comment were sent by Michigan Advance to both the secretary of state and the Michigan attorney general, but have yet to be returned.
WIRED reported that the canvassers were told if they didn’t engage at least a thousand doors a week their hotel bills would not be paid and they would have to pay for their own flight home. Additionally, they were reportedly not told that they would be supporting Trump’s campaign or working for a subcontractor for Musk’s America PAC.
Election lawyer Mark Brewer, a former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, told the Advance that third-party operations are rife with problems like this.
“These folks didn’t even know who they were canvassing for, and so they have absolutely no loyalty, no interest, in whether Trump gets elected or not. They’re just being mercenaries,” said Brewer. “On top of that, they are significantly mistreated mercenaries. There might be labor law violations here, in terms of the way these people are being treated.”
Brewer said there could also easily be election law violations and he wouldn’t be surprised if Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel or Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson took a look into the accusations.
“Obviously, all this activity has to be reported by Musk’s PAC, the firms that he hired and so forth,” he said, “If those canvassers were doing any state work, there should be state reporting as well. I mean, if they were advocating for any state or local candidates in the course of their canvassing and were spending money in that regard, that should be reported to the state, as well.”
WIRED reported that Blitz Canvassing had received more than $9 million from America PAC for its services, although Brewer said the specific details of the Michigan operation won’t need to be reported until after the election.
Another issue brought up in the report were accusations that Blitz Canvassing had issues with what were described as “fake door knocks being flagged by Campaign Sidekick, the glitchy app used by America PAC.”
While Dennis Lennox, a Republican consultant and political commentator, says he can’t comment on the specifics of the WIRED report, he did tell the Advance none of those details would be a surprise.
“It’s no secret the ground game traditionally implemented by the Republican Party was outsourced to outside groups this cycle. These outside groups are inevitably going to rely upon contractors and subcontractors, which is problematic as we saw with the 2022 petition fiasco,” said Lennox. “The race remains a toss-up, but a Trump loss in Michigan will almost certainly be the result of poor organizational infrastructure and almost no ground game outside parts of the state within contested congressional races.”
Lennox also noted on X, formerly Twitter, that as of Thursday morning there was a more than 15% difference between early balloting in Michigan and Georgia, both important battleground states.
“I believe the difference is a result of not having a real, organized ground game and effective get-out-the-vote operation in Michigan,” he told the Advance.
Meanwhile, America PAC has also drawn significant criticism for a series of campaign ads for Trump that have used vulgar and violent language about Harris, including one in particular that called the vice president the “C-word” before saying she was a “Communist.” The ad was later deleted from America PAC’s X account.
State Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia), who chairs the Progressive Women’s Caucus, told the Advance anyone paying attention knew exactly what that ad was trying to say.
“I don’t think anyone is buying this cutesy act about it was meant to mean ‘communist.’ It was meant to say a thing without explicitly saying it. And it’s just a play on the same old misogyny that we’ve been seeing out of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and the entire campaign,” she said. “If you’re going to call someone something, then say it. But I think it’s cowardly. I think it’s completely inappropriate. And I think it is not going to do anyone any favors because I think women are fed up with this level of misogyny and politics.”
Pohutsky says she understands politics can be a contact sport, as the saying goes, but believes attack ads should be based on a candidate’s positions and track record.
“But to approximate calling someone one of the most offensive slurs you can call them, a very gendered slur on top of it, just doesn’t belong in politics. And I think that women in particular are very, very tired of this becoming more commonplace,” she said.
On Wednesday, Trump reiterated at a rally in Green Bay, Wisc., that he would be women’s protector.
“They said, ‘Sir, please don’t say that.’ Well I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” said Trump.
Another group backed by Musk, Future Coalition PAC, has also reportedly sent mailers to Michigan voters that have been called antisemitic for trying to portray Harris as “unwaveringly” supporting Israel while noting she “leans on Jewish husband Doug Emhoff to advise on high level pro-Israel policies.”
Musk himself has been connected to what election officials have called a “firehose of election conspiracy theories,” including amplifying claims that Michigan’s voter rolls were packed with inactive voters and ripe for fraud, which state officials had to rebut as untrue.
Also, a dark money network supporting former President Donald Trump, and connected to Musk, has created a website for an initiative called Progress 2028 with ads that falsely purport it is Harris’ liberal counter to the conservative Project 2025 including policy issues that are counter to her actual positions.
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