Exclusive: clip from canvasser for Musk’s America Pac reveals apparent ease in which GPS location can be spoofed

Exclusive: clip from canvasser for Musk’s America Pac reveals apparent ease in which GPS location can be spoofed

Donald Trump’s ground game in Arizona and Nevada may be undercut by canvassers working for America Pac using GPS spoofing to pretend they have knocked on doors when they haven’t, according to multiple people familiar with the practice and a leaked how-to-fake-location video.

The ramifications for Trump may be far reaching, given America Pac has taken on the bulk of the Trump campaign’s ground game in the battleground states, and the election increasingly appears set to be decided by turnout.

A bootleg how-to-spoof video, made by an America Pac canvasser in Nevada and obtained by the Guardian, shows the apparent ease with which locations can be changed to fake door-knocks, calling into question how many Trump voters have actually been reached by the field operation.

The video, shared with a few hundred canvassers, walks through the setup: a user downloads a GPS-spoofing app to falsely place themself at the door of a Trump voter, fakes responses to the survey and takes steps to cover up the fraud by varying the survey responses to make it believable.

  • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8·
    25 days ago

    This doesn’t hurt anyone but Trump does it? I’m trying to figure out the election fraud angle - it’s really just defrauding Trump and his campaign for payment of services not rendered, correct? Not that it’s OK if so (I mean, it’s funny, but they should still be prosecuted), but how does this fraudulently influence the election (if at all)?

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      24 days ago

      One thing this does is amplify the false narrative that the election will be stolen away from Trump.

      These canvassing results make it look like there are more Trump supporters than there really are. It looks like it’s going to be a very close race anyway, but if Harris gets a higher number of votes in states like Nevada or Arizona than this canvassing data suggests, then Trump and his supporters will ignore the prospect that their numbers are bad and will instead use these corrupted numbers as evidence that either a) fake voters are in the mix or that b) votes for Trump are being suppressed.

      And this will then be extrapolated across all battleground states that don’t go their way, not just Arizona and Nevada.

      Edit: clarified a couple of sentences.

    • scarabine@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      6·
      25 days ago

      I think in a lot of cases this is just a big rabbit hole for anyone who wants to fix it or prove it even happened.

      • The best option is to start over and start canvassing again from scratch.
      • Proving and then holding someone accountable can’t be automated in a trustworthy way, so you’d have to invent that process and then run everyone through them.

      Both of those are just expensive, in both time and money terms. I think it’s got to be damage control, and then maybe some attempt to round people up and find the fraud after the election?

      But the bottom line is that it’s the PAC that shoulders the entire cost, for now, and the Trump campaign just has to eat the damage for now. These aren’t federal crimes or really even actual crimes, so any eventual outcome is most likely to just be lawsuits or legal threats against supposed fraudsters?