Donald Trump's ground game in Arizona and Nevada may be undermined by pollsters working for America Pac who use GPS spoofing to pretend to have knocked on doors when they haven't, according to several people familiar with the practice and a leaked walkthrough. on how to fake. location video.
The ramifications for Trump could be far-reaching, given that America Pac has taken over most of the Trump campaign's running game in battleground states, and the election appears increasingly decided by turnout.
A bootleg video on how to spoof, taken by an America Pac pollster in Nevada and obtained by The Guardian, shows the apparent ease with which locations can be changed to knock on fake doors, calling into question how many Trump voters have actually been contacted. for field operation.
The video, shared with a few hundred pollsters, shows the setup: A user downloads a GPS spoofing app to falsely locate himself at a Trump voter's door, falsifies survey responses, and takes steps to cover up the fraud by varying the responses. of the survey to make it credible.
The extent of the GPS spoofing practice is unclear because it is difficult to catch cheaters without comparing the data with another tracker. It's not a problem limited to America Pac either; GPS spoofing has been a problem for years and detecting cheaters requires more and more resources.
In response to the report, America Pac issued a joint statement from its suppliers Blitz, Patriot Grassroots, Echo Canyon and Synapse Group.
“Every marked door leaves unique fingerprints, and the fingerprints of a door marked with a phishing app leave these fingerprints in neon colors. “We have technological auditing and fraud prevention tools to identify and weed out the bad apples, the Pac doesn't pay a cent and the next pollster comes knocking,” he said.
Blitz, the provider in Arizona and Nevada, has its surveyors clock in and out using the “Quickbooks Workforce” app, which continuously tracks locations and has some geofencing features, according to two people directly familiar with the situation.
But geolocation data stored in the Workforce app can be manipulated by turning off location services, and a former Blitz auditor said they would typically only review secondary location data if something first appeared wrong in the Marketing campaign polling app itself. Sidekick.
The video comes as America Pac has struggled to deal with 24% of door knocks in Arizona and 25% of door knocks carried out in Nevada last week by less sophisticated cheaters working for Blitz being internally flagged as potentially false or fraudulent, according to data obtained by The Guardian.
Fake surveys
In the how-to-spoof video, the canvasser opens a door-knocking route for America Pac in Nevada (apparently for the benefit of his colleagues) and explains the method he uses to change his location to make it look like he's visiting every house he's supposed to. that you must visit.
The surveyor first opens the change location app and zooms in so that the map reflects the Marketing campaign Sidekick app map showing the houses that are supposed to be torn down with orange dots.
It then memorizes the location of the target Trump voter's house in the Sidekick app, returns to the location-changing app, and taps on the same house to spoof its location as if it were supposedly in the driveway.
“These houses down here look the same on the app, so you know, you just move that shit there, or you can type in the address, but this is a lot faster, so I just change my location right there,” the pollster said . explains.
The surveyor then explains how to falsify survey responses to make the activity appear suspicious and invite an internal audit of the doors that could result in termination or referral by the survey company for processing.
“So here's the part that matters: you click on the house, you want to do 'not at home' for about five houses, so you click on the shit 'not at home', 'literature left', growth, and then you want to put up a survey. inside,” says the pollster.
“So this is the survey. You click available for survey. This is what I do. I click “definitely yes,” “Donald Trump,” “early vote,” “no,” “end poll.” So it's that easy. So you keep bouncing between houses. And you don't want to go too fast, but make it look realistic.”
It is unclear how often Blitz's auditors review the approximately 400-450 pollsters. If audits happen every few days (one person familiar with the matter said they were at least every five days) and canvassers together rip off several hundred doors a day, that could add up quickly.
The issue of suspicious doors at America Pac's field operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground game program, where paid pollsters typically aren't as interested in their candidate's victory compared to traditional volunteers or the campaign staff.
So far, Musk has donated $75 million to America Pac in the three months of its existence. Approximately $30 million has been spent on the basic operation to boost Trump's vote, and the rest has gone to digital and mail advertising for the former president, as well as down-ballot Republican candidates.
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