The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office said on Monday it was eyeing a political operation founded by billionaire Elon Musk after complaining to the state elections board that the PAC collected personal data but failed to help users register to vote as promised. committee.
The North Carolina Elections Commission told CNBC late Monday that it had launched an investigation into Musk’s U.S. Political Action Committee.
“North Carolina law makes it a crime for someone to fail to submit a voter registration form if they tell a voter they are going to do so,” Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the commission, told CNBC.
The Michigan Secretary of State’s office announced the new and similar probes on Sunday after CNBC reported that Musk’s U.S. political action committee used pretexts to solicit personal data from website users in swing states, such as zip codes, full addresses and telephone number. Help them register to vote without doing so.
In contrast, users of America PAC’s website in states that are not considered competitive in the 2024 elections are directed to that state’s voter registration page.
The U.S. political action committee supports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump against the de facto Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election.
Musk, CEO Tesla SpaceX and the owner of X said he Created Public Accounts Committee and Help fund it.
“Our office is aware of this issue and is investigating,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said Monday of the PAC website.
Asked for more details, she added: “We have not launched a formal investigation.”
Stein is the Democratic candidate for governor of North Carolina.
A spokesman for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Sunday that the Democratic Party’s office is investigating the American Political Action Committee to determine whether the group violated state law.
“Every citizen deserves to know exactly how a political action committee uses their personal information, especially if an entity claims it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” Benson’s spokesperson said the same day.
Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin are battleground states where users on the American PAC website were not given help registering to vote, despite claims they would receive such help.
Spokespeople for Musk and the American PAC did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
As of Monday, users in North Carolina who open the America PAC website will not be able to click to register to vote after submitting their profile, even though the page says they can register on the site.
On Friday, shortly after CNBC’s first story about the PAC’s voter registration link was published, the longtime political activist David Wheelerfiled a complaint about the PAC with the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
According to a copy of the complaint reviewed by CNBC, Wheeler accused the American PAC of violating state law.
“American political action committees are pretending to be conducting online voter registration campaigns,” Wheeler wrote. “However, they violated multiple North Carolina laws by simply collecting voter data and fraudulently collecting and retaining confidential voter information.”
Wheeler runs his own political action committee, American Revealers, which spends money opposing the campaigns of Republican candidates, including former Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado .
Gannon, director of public information for the North Carolina Elections Commission, told CNBC that they had launched an investigation into the U.S. Political Action Committee after election officials received complaints. The committee did not identify the complainant, but its description of the charges mirrored what Wheeler wrote.
“The complaint alleges that the organization was hosting a website that led people to believe they were registering to vote but never submitted a registration form to election officials. The complaint is under investigation,” Gannon said in an email after this article was first published. .
On Monday, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, told CNBC that the American Political Action Committee has not yet applied to use the state’s online voter registration interface.
The Secretary of State’s office allows “partisan and nonpartisan entities that have undergone rigorous security testing and agree to be bound by the Department of State’s Terms of Use” to communicate with Application programming interface (API) to securely submit your voter registration application,” a spokesperson said in an email.
“American PAC has not applied to participate in the program, and the department is not aware of any steps taken by this entity to submit electronic voter registration applications for processing,” the spokesperson wrote.
He did not answer when asked whether American PAC’s failure to apply for the program would result in a secretary of state investigation or any other legal consequences.
According to AdImpact, US political action committees have spent more than $100,000 on digital ads targeting Pennsylvania voters since early July.
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