Elon Musk’s PAC is behind the robo texts telling Pa. voters to send in mail ballots — and vote for Donald Trump

Elon Musk is pinging Pennsylvanians, exhorting them to cast their mail ballots for former President Donald Trump.

Voters throughout the state recently have been receiving texts from Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC that say, “You got your PA ballot in the mail, but haven’t returned it yet. Trump needs your vote! Return it ASAP — the fate of our nation depends on you.”

The text includes a photo of Trump and mail ballot envelopes.

Many individuals, especially Republicans, are new to mail voting, and Trump himself has expressed mixed messages about the process. For example, he’s blamed his 2020 loss on mail balloting, but then has praised it as a good system ahead of the 2024 election.

Getting texts about mail ballots could be confusing to GOP voters, political experts say. Several voters have wondered how Musk’s group could have discovered that they requested mail ballots, let alone that they’ve yet to return them.

“It’s a sign of how on edge we are,” said Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan group in Philadelphia that advocates for better government and elections. “There’s so much crazy rhetoric out there, and now people get these texts and ask, ‘Who’s got my information?’ It’s a common perception that what’s happening with the texts is wrong.”

It isn’t. Much about mail voting — except who you voted for — is public record. And the Musk PAC’s outreach, as well as similar efforts by backers of Vice President Kamala Harris, is perfectly legal.

» READ MORE: Elon Musk is obsessed with delivering Pennsylvania for Donald Trump. Here’s what he’s doing.

When Pennsylvania voters request a mail ballot, that gets marked in the State Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE, system. County officials update that system when ballots are mailed out and when they are returned.

Individual voters can check the status of their own ballot using the system. But much of the data in the system is also public record. As a result, campaigns and civic engagement groups will use the data to target voters who have not yet cast their ballot.

Some counties will also mark in the SURE system if a voter returned their ballot but had an error, such as a missing signature or date, that prevents it from being counted. Outside groups may use that public information to inform voters that their ballot may not be counted and urge them to contact local officials.

Voters can check the status of their own ballot on the state’s website.

Republicans are “just starting to emulate Democrats in mail-in voting,” said Dean Browning, cofounder of Win Again PAC, a Pennsylvania group trying to break Democrats’ “mail-in monopoly” by persuading GOP voters to cast ballots by mail.

“You send out texts to remind people and be persistent with them,” he said. “It’s called chasing the ballots.”

In the 2022 election, Democrats had an 87% mail ballot return rate compared to Republicans’ 81% to 82%, Browning said.

“That’s a substantial difference,” he added. “Republicans used to say they don’t like mail-in. They just want to vote on Election Day. But the rules of the game have changed. If the Democrats have election month mailing in ballots, and we have just one day, we are not going to win in Pennsylvania.”

Generally, the America PAC texts are targeted to Republicans, although sometimes Independent voters will get them if there’s data that indicated they might support the GOP, Republican operatives say.

The most effective method to remind people to vote remains going door to door, Browning said, but it’s more expensive than texting.

In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk, said to be the richest person in the world, was putting $45 million a month into America PAC. Musk has said the figure is “not true” but didn’t clarify.

America PAC is categorized as a super PAC, according to the Campaign Legal Center, a national nonpartisan group that works to advance democracy through law.

Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs cannot contribute directly to candidates or political party committees. Both traditional PACs and super PACs can spend unlimited amounts of their funds on independent expenditures in federal races, which are ads communicating a message that “expressly advocates” in support or opposition to a specific federal candidate’s election.

But unlike a traditional PAC, a super PAC may also solicit and accept unlimited contributions, including from unions and corporations, to pay for its independent expenditures.

As of Sept. 17, America PAC had spent $57 million, according to FactCheck.org. That includes around $30 million supporting Trump, about $18 million against Harris, and nearly $9 million against President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race in July.

Within the last week, America PAC started offering people $47 each if they successfully get one registered swing-state voter to sign a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution. Paying individuals directly to register to vote is illegal, but America PAC’s petition appears to skirt laws that forbid certain types of election-related payments, paying referrers of registered voters instead, NBC News reported.

“Easy money,” Musk said in a post about the initiative.

One ad paid for by America PAC and sent to voters throughout the country asserted, “If you sit this election out, Kamala and the crazies will win.”

It said Trump will stop the “nonsense” of higher costs and illegal immigration, because he’s an “American badass.”