Elon Musk’s scheme to help Trump is a hot mess—and possibly illegal

Right-wing billionaire Elon Musk’s $75 million effort to go door-to-door to get out the vote for Donald Trump is in disarray, according to multiple reports.

Finding itself out-raised by Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s campaign outsourced much of its get-out-the-vote operation to a Musk-backed super PAC this cycle. But Musk’s effort has been hit with allegations that paid canvassers are lying about the number of doors they are knocking, that the app the canvassers use doesn’t work, and that other canvassers are quitting because the pay is not good enough for the amount of work they are required to do. 

What’s more, other canvassers who are actually doing the door-knocking they are tasked with say the technology they are given to find homes to target and log their interactions with voters doesn’t work properly, making their jobs difficult or impossible.

Alysia McMillan, a paid canvasser working for Musk’s operation, told The Washington Post that the app Musk’s PAC uses to identify homes with possible Trump supporters is glitchy and forced her to randomly choose doors to knock. It led to hours of work, with few voter interactions and little payoff, as many of the homes were of voters who were not open to backing Trump.

Reuters also reported that in Nevada—another battleground that the Trump campaign is trying to peel off—Musk’s PAC had to fire canvassers because auditors for the PAC “keep catching people cheating,” with those people allegedly not actually going to the homes they claimed they were visiting.

On top of all that? Musk is also possibly engaged in an illegal scheme to get people to register to vote.