Election officials in two states have launched investigations into tech billionaire Elon Musk's pro-Trump political action committee after CNBC first reported it falsely claims to register eligible swing-state voters on its website. An election law expert told Salon that officials in other states could soon follow.
The North Carolina Board of Elections on Monday told CNBC that it has opened a probe into the Musk-backed America PAC after it received a complaint over the group's collection of personal user data under the guise of registering them to vote — while failing to do so.
“North Carolina law makes it a crime for someone to fail to submit a voter’s registration form if that person has told a voter that they would be submitting the voter’s registration form,” board’s spokesman Patrick Gannon, told the outlet.
The new inquiry follows the announcement on Sunday of a similar investigation into the PAC's tactic being carried out by the Michigan secretary of state's office.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Stetson University law professor whose specializations include election and campaign finance law, told Salon that state officials are "well within their rights to enforce rules against any person or entity which is trying to interfere" in their elections or mislead residents into thinking "they have been registered to vote if the opposite is true."
Misleading people about their voter registration status can create a problem where hundreds or even thousands of people who believe they are registered to vote show up to the polls on election day and get turned away, she said.
"Done on a large scale, misleading potential voters in swing states about their status as registered voters could cause chaos for individual voters, poll workers, and ultimately the state who will have to deal with this," Torres-Spelliscy said, also noting the "privacy concerns for the people who get entangled in this trap."
"If a person is trying to register to vote," she added, "they want their information to go to the board of elections not to some billionaire’s political action committee."
According to CNBC, the PAC asked website visitors who entered zip codes in battleground states to enter personal data — including dates of birth, full addresses and phone numbers — claiming it would help them register to vote through the site. Users in non-competitive states, however, were directed to their states' official voter registration pages.
Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia were among the battleground states where visitors to America PAC's website did not receive help submitting their voter registration despite the site claiming it would provide assistance, CNBC noted.
As of Wednesday morning, the America PAC website had scrubbed its homepage and removed the voter registration button, only leaving avenues for users and media to contact the PAC. Its voter registration page, which had been accessible through a web search following the button's removal, also now returns a "404 page not found" error.
America PAC did not immediately respond when asked why it had removed the pages from its website.
When accessing the voter registration page via web search on Tuesday afternoon, a pop-up read: "It was brought to our attention on August 2 that some people may have been unable to complete the registration process on this website on August 1 and 2. If you had any difficulty, please try to complete the registration process again or email info@theamericapac.org for assistance."
Salon previously confirmed that entering zip codes in Democrat- or Republican-stronghold states, like New York and Ohio, respectively, redirected users to their official state websites for voter registration. If a zip code for a swing-state like Michigan and North Carolina was entered, the site instead prompted the user to enter, submit and confirm personal information but did not provide links to the states' official voter registration sites.
A spokeswoman for the North Carolina attorney general on Monday told CNBC that "our office is aware of this issue and is looking into it," adding that it has "not opened a formal investigation."
A spokeswoman for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told the outlet Sunday that her office is investigating the PAC to determine whether it has broken state law.
North Carolina General Statute Chapter 163-82.6 declares it a Class 2 misdemeanor for any person to "communicate to the applicant acceptance of the delegation" to submit their voter registration form "and then fail to make a good faith effort to deliver the form so that it is received by the county board of elections in time to satisfy the registration deadline" for the next election.
Michigan legal experts, however, were unsure if the PAC's deceptive practice violated any laws in their state. Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told CNBC that she was "not aware of any laws being broken."
Still, according to Mary Massaron, a partner of Michigan law firm Plunket Cooney and leader of it's Election Law Practice Group, the America PAC claiming to assist eligible voters in registering to vote and failing to do so is "concerning."
"If any candidate or PAC’s website suggests it will help citizens get registered to vote, elicits personal information, and then fails to provide the information about how to register to vote, it is concerning," she told Salon. "Steps to make registration and voting easy for every citizen are important. And steps that serve to frustrate someone trying to figure out how to participate are a disservice to democracy and our democratic elections."
Whether America PAC's tactic could amount to a violation of federal law is also a complex question. According to Torres-Spelliscy, federal campaign finance law only regulates how federal PACs, like America PAC, are funded but does not regulate the substantive content of political messages they may produce "with the exception of disclaimer requirements for broadcast ads." Whatever "criminality" a PAC produces, however, may still be "prosecuted under other laws like federal wire fraud laws," she explained.
"If a PAC is pretending to do one thing and is defrauding the public," that could qualify as a violation, she said, noting that the Department of Justice has prosecuted "scam PACs" using those laws.
Torres-Spelliscy argued that America PAC's voter registration tactic could also be found to have broken election laws in multiple states at the same time, as seen after former President Donald Trump and his allies' attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Lawyers aligned with Trump, in trying to acquire fake electors in multiple states who could falsely certify him as the state's victor, were accused of violating those states' election laws, she explained. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former personal attorney, has been indicted over the scheme in Georgia and Arizona, while Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro was indicted in Georgia, where he has since pleaded guilty, and Wisconsin.
A "similar" scenario could play out here, she said.
"If this PAC has been tricking citizens in multiple states with the false promise of registering them to vote, the PAC may be faced with investigations in more than just Michigan," Torres-Spelliscy said.
