Musk’s PAC Told Colorado Voters Their Ballot Requests Were In. They Hadn’t Made Any

The text messages arrived last week, all carrying the same message to a group of Colorado voters: “Your ballot request is in. Confirm now where and when to return it.” The sender was America PAC, the super PAC Elon Musk is bankrolling to help Republicans keep Congress. The wrinkle, as CNN’s Fredreka Schouten reports, is that Colorado mails a ballot to every active registered voter automatically — no request exists to be “in” — and county election offices were soon fielding calls from residents wondering whether someone had requested ballots in their names. “People were like, ‘Wait a second. I didn’t submit that request. Is something fishy going on? Did someone submit something on my behalf?’” said Carly Koppes, the Republican county clerk in Weld County, north of Denver.

Election officials in both Colorado and Washington state have now issued public warnings about the group’s voter information. A spokesman for America PAC didn’t respond to questions about the Colorado texts, though on X the PAC argued that Washington officials criticizing its activity were trying to “suppress” voter registration.

Scale matters here. Musk spent nearly $300 million as the largest publicly disclosed donor of the 2024 federal cycle, and he is back: as of Friday morning, America PAC had reported nearly $40 million in independent expenditures on House and Senate races, more than $31 million of it on Senate contests, led by the Texas race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico. This cycle Musk has disclosed about $50 million to America PAC, another $40 million to other Republican-aligned super PACs — including $5 million in May to one backing Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ohio governor bid — plus smaller direct donations to candidates. His next disclosure, covering July through September, lands later this month.

The operation’s mechanics are worth a look. Federal records show millions going to digital ads, phone messaging and printing. The Facebook ads open with provocation — one aimed at Texas shows a bearded man applying heavy makeup over the line “Don’t stay home while the crazy liberals elect radicals” — and route users to check their registration at VoteSafe.org, where they hand over cell numbers and email addresses. “By providing your telephone number and email, you consent to receive emails, calls and text messages from America PAC,” the disclosure reads, which is to say the site’s real product is permission to keep contacting you through Election Day. The site is at least candid about the rest:

The information about voting and registering to vote on this website is sourced from third parties and may not necessarily be accurate.

Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist who runs the Center for Campaign Innovation, calls the tactics “pretty standard get-out-the-vote” fare and argues the PAC has built tools states could learn from, like an “America Pass” voters can save to their Google or Apple wallets with ballot deadlines and early-voting windows. “State election officials ought to be embarrassed that PACs and political campaigners have had to create a better process for informing and reminding voters about casting their ballots,” he said.

The officials disagree about who should be embarrassed — and about accuracy being optional. “Instead of relying on a website that itself warns its voting information may not be accurate, get accurate and timely information directly from your state and local election offices,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said in a statement, noting that VoteSafe.org “can’t actually register you to vote.” Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, Jena Griswold, called the PAC’s messaging “misleading” and pointed voters to her office and county clerks.

The texts hit Weld and Adams counties, where freshman Republican Rep. Gabe Evans faces Democrat Manny Rutinel in a race independent handicappers rate a tossup — and where America PAC has reported spending more than $228,000 to benefit Evans. Josh Zygielbaum, the Democratic elections chief in Adams County, got about a dozen calls from puzzled voters; “that volume of phone calls is usually a good indicator for us that something’s a bigger issue because people generally don’t pick up the phone these days unless there’s a bigger concern,” he said. Koppes, next door in Weld, has “had to have some clarifying conversations” of her own.

There is a neat little arrangement embedded in all this. The fine print says the information may be wrong; when it is, the customer-service function is performed, free of charge, by county clerks the PAC doesn’t fund. Koppes, a Republican, tells her callers that third-party turnout drives are a normal part of elections. “But we don’t control them,” she says, “or whether they use the correct verbiage.”