Elon Musk arrives for a bipartisan Artificial Intelligence (AI) Insight Forum for all U.S. senators hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., September 13, 2023.
- America PAC, a political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk, is being eyed by the office of North Carolina's attorney general and the state's board of elections.
- The PAC is supporting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in his election contest against Democratic de facto nominee Kamala Harris.
- America PAC claimed on its website that it would help users register to vote but failed to do so in some battleground states.
The North Carolina Attorney General's Office said Monday that it is eyeing a political action committee created by billionaire Elon Musk following a complaint to the state election board over the PAC's collection of personal data while failing to help users register to vote as promised.
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The North Carolina Board of Elections later Monday told CNBC that it has opened an investigation of Musk's America PAC.
"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," the board's spokesman, Patrick Gannon, told CNBC.
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The new inquiries and a similar one announced Sunday by Michigan's secretary of state's office follow a report by CNBC that Musk's America PAC was asking website users in battleground states for personal data — such as ZIP code, full address and a phone number — under the pretext of helping them register to vote without doing so.
In contrast, users of America PAC's site in states that are not considered competitive in the 2024 election were directed to voter registration pages for their state.
The America PAC is supporting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the 2024 election against Vice President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee.
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Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X, has said he created the PAC and helped fund it.
"Our office is aware of this issue and is looking into it," said a spokeswoman for North Carolina AG Josh Stein on Monday about the PAC's website
When asked for further details, she added, "We have not opened a formal investigation."
Stein is the Democratic nominee for governor in North Carolina.
A spokeswoman for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on Sunday said the Democrat's office is investigating America PAC to determine if the group has violated state law.
"Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state," Benson's spokeswoman said that day.
Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin were among the battleground states where users on America PAC's website were not helped with registering to vote despite claims they would get such assistance.
Musk and a spokesman for the America PAC did not return requests for comment Monday.
As of Monday, a user with a North Carolina location who opened the America PAC website would not be able to click through to register to vote after submitting personal data despite pages indicating they could register on the site.
On Friday, shortly after CNBC's first story on America PAC's voter registration links was published, longtime political activist David Wheeler, sent a complaint about the PAC to the North Carolina Board of Elections.
Wheeler alleged America PAC has broken state laws, according to a copy of the complaint reviewed by CNBC.
"The America PAC is pretending to be running an online voter registration drive," Wheeler wrote. "However, they are simply collecting data on voters and are fraudulently collecting and retaining confidential voter information against numerous NC law[s]."
Wheeler runs his own PAC, American Muckrakers, which has spent money opposing election bids of Republican candidates, including former Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
Gannon, the public information director for the North Carolina Board of Elections, told CNBC that they have launched an investigation into the America PAC after election officials received a complaint. The board did not identify the complainant, but the description of the allegations mirrors what Wheeler had written.
"The complaint alleges that the organization is hosting a website that leads people to believe they are registering to vote, but no registration form is ever submitted to election officials. This complaint is being investigated," Gannon said in an email after this article was first published.
On Monday, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who is a Republican, told CNBC that America PAC had not applied to use the state's online voter registration interface.
The secretary of state's office allowed both partisan and nonpartisan entities "who undergo rigorous security testing and agree to be bound by the Department's Terms of Use to connect with an Application Programming Interface (API) to securely submit voter registration applications," the spokesman said in an email.
"America PAC has not applied to participate in this program, and the Department is not aware of the entity taking any steps to submit electronic voter registration applications for processing," the spokesman wrote.
He did not reply when asked if America PAC's lack of an application for the program would lead to an investigation by the secretary of state or any other legal consequence.
America PAC has spent over $100,000 on digital advertisements targeting voters in Pennsylvania since early July, according to AdImpact.
