Exclusive: Trump’s ground game flagged as potentially fake in key states | Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s campaign may not reach the thousands of voters he wants to attract in Arizona and Nevada as about a quarter of door knocks conducted by America Pac are flagged as potentially fraudulent by its advertising app, according to leaked data and people familiar with him the thing.

The possible fake door knocking – when canvassers falsely claim to have visited a home – could be a major setback for Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain in the polls with less than 20 days until the election.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced most of its work to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk, betting that spending millions to elect Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would increase returns.

But 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 flagged in “unusual polling logs” by the campaign acquisition app Campaign Sidekick.

Arizona data, for example, shows that of the 35,692 doors visited Wednesday by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation, 8,511 doors were marked in the unusual survey logs.

The extent of blocked doors in America Pac’s operations underscores the risk of outsourcing a grassroots program where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared to volunteers or campaign staff.

America Pac denied that it had actually experienced fraud on this scale in Arizona and Nevada and declined to comment on the reporting of this story.

“Sidekick was never expected to handle the audit of America Pac’s door operations. The reason the Pac is confident in its numbers is because of the auditing procedures that each acquiring firm puts in place and the Pac’s auditing procedures broadly,” said a person familiar with the America Pac operation.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But several people familiar with the Campaign Sidekick app, including a new reviewer from Blitz Canvassing and an executive from another vendor who signed a nondisclosure agreement with America Pac, agreed that the unusual activity logs provide an effective detection tool from fraudsters.

The unusual activity logs, for example, showed a canvasser who, according to GPS, was sitting at a Guayo’s On the Trail restaurant half a mile from the doors he allegedly hit in Globe, Arizona. Another poll worker was recorded referring to voters two blocks from that residence as “not home.”

The Guardian also conducted its own test to see whether manually removing cases of “false positives” – doors that were incorrectly flagged as fraudulent – ​​would show that the unusual activity logs were too sensitive. Based on a randomly selected sample of 26 advertisers in Arizona, the suspected counterfeit rate was consistent with the overall rate.

Suspicious doors

The Trump campaign took a gamble this cycle by outsourcing most of its efforts to political action committees after the Federal Election Commission earlier this year allowed campaigns to coordinate their voter turnout efforts with outside groups for the first time.

The campaign initially called for multiple Pacs to help advance the Trump election, but America Pac ultimately became the largest and most ambitious of the outside groups, investing more than $29.8 million in its pro-Trump field operation and the only Pac with a significant presence in this country became every battleground state.

The largest of the other Pacs involved in fieldwork, such as Turning Point Action and America ​First Works, have a smaller presence. Turning Point’s team in Wisconsin has also since been folded into America Pac’s operations, two people familiar with the matter said.

Because of its heavy investment, America Pac has seen an impressive number of door knocks in just a few months through its network of multiple vendors and dozens of those vendors’ subcontractors in each of the battleground states.

However, according to the leaked data, the number of door knockers increased in the final stretch of the elections and with it the suspected cases of forgery. As of October 15, 20.1% of doors in Arizona were flagged by the unusual activity logs. On October 16th it rose to 23.8% and on October 17th it reached 26.9%.

The upward trend was also reflected in Nevada. On October 15th, 21.2% was reported through the unusual polling protocol, a number that rose to 23.8% on October 16th and then rose dramatically to 30.1% on October 17th.

Under normal circumstances, a canvasser goes to the door of a home where a Trump voter lives. The employee then navigates to a list of questions in the smartphone app and records the survey responses.

An unusual activity report in the Campaign Sidekick app is automatically generated when a survey taker completes a survey some distance from the target voter’s home.

The app has built-in tolerances and creates an unusual survey report considering multiple factors such as: B. the speed at which the customer observer in question is said to be hitting doors and whether the responses are recorded at a distance of more than 100 feet from the target door.

America Pac has stated that its audits are conducted by its suppliers. In Arizona and Nevada, Blitz Canvassing checks the numbers at least every five days. If a recruiter is caught cheating, they will be fired immediately and their docket assigned to another recruiter.

“America Pac’s field program is the most robust and effective external acquisition effort ever, knocking on more doors with more people in more isolated terrain than ever before,” say America Pac vendors Blitz Canvassing, Echo Canyon, Synapse Group and Patriot Grassroots and Campaign Sidekick said in a joint statement.

“Thanks to the rigorous auditing infrastructure each acquisition company employs to complement Campaign Sidekick’s strong capabilities, we are fully confident in the authenticity of our door numbers and are on track to exceed every single one of our door targets,” the statement said .

However, the screening system used in Arizona and Nevada only works if the fraudulent advertisers are caught quickly, which is not always the case. In one case, a recruiter was only fired for blatant fraud after working for five days and allegedly hitting 796 doors – with each one flagged as suspicious.

Part of the problem with paid prospecting in general is that the more doors the prospecting salespeople walk in, the less motivated they are to fire the sales reps because the salespeople get paid at the door. If the doors are not hit, the seller owes the customer money back or owes them as many “free” doors.

For America Pac, as the labor supply of customer service representatives dwindles at this late point in the cycle and a replacement is hired, there is further incentive for vendors to fire customer service reps who may only be cheating on one out of 10 doors – effectively someone who is just cutting corners increasingly difficult, said two people familiar with the situation.