Donald Trump’s Ground Game in Michigan is a lot of jokey apps
The Detroit Elections: Campaigning for a Low-Propensity Voter in the Post-Presidential Pandemic. The Case for the Trump Campaign
DETROIT, Mich. — “This year, we’ve gotta beat the Dems at their own game,” Brian Pannebecker, the founder of Auto Workers for Trump 2024, told the Michigan crowd during his warm up act for senator and vice presidential hopeful JD Vance. I know the Democrats are going to cheat…you have to vote early.
As the crowd roared at Detroit’s Easter Market, Pannebecker laid out the foundational piece of the Trump campaign’s voter turnout operation in Michigan.
“They’re called low-propensity voters,” Pannebecker said, referring to the term for people who rarely, if ever, turn out to the polls. “That’s who we’re targeting.”
In Michigan, there is a discrepancy between Vice President Harris and Trump in his field strategy, but it is still within the margin of error. The question of whether the lackadaisical-seeming approach of the Trump campaign is a poor man’s moneyball strategy that could actually work has been pressed by the campaign.
The Trump campaign is using technology and a podcast to target younger voters instead of relying on traditional voter turnout operations such as the RNC.
Republicans are depending on a pair of mobile apps which are difficult to find, since they aren’t on the Apple or Android app stores. The one used by Elon Musk’s America PAC is severely limited by the lack of a geo-tracking feature, forcing users to rely on “offline walkbooks” which don’t always upload, a key bug first reported by The Guardian. Tucker Carlson and the Michigan GOP have been promoting 10xVotes, which requires users to search for people they know instead of giving them a list of contacts. (This reporter created an account and tried searching for family members in Michigan who would fall squarely under the category of low-propensity voters and came up with no results.)
“You gotta remember we were in the middle of the pandemic. People didn’t want to go to the polls on Election Day, so they decided to cast their votes by mail. Some of them weren’t quite as fast in getting them delivered. And that is exactly what you experienced at 3 o’clock, 4 o’clock in the morning.”
The Detroit Elections Department Chief Operating Officer could have supplied the answer. He supervised poll workers who had to wade through more than 170,000 Absentee Ballots in the city.
But as the vote-counting wore on, the situation deteriorated. Hundreds of people converged on the convention center. The hall reached full capacity after which some challengers were ordered to leave.
After the riot, the people who plan for the next presidential contest were more determined to protect the poll workers.
“We got through 2020 when all of that happened, the threats and the hurling insults at election workers. It was not expected. We are ready if it should happen since we know that may happen.
The Detroit Center Polling Facility After a Chaotic Count in 2020, Here’s What Detroit will Do Differently This Year (Apr 2024/nx-s1-5161536)
Officials moved the central polling location to the enclosed, cavernous Hall A, on the opposite end of the center from where votes were tallied in 2020.
“There’s no windows. You can’t be inside if you don’t have credentials. Those folk who decide to be present for protests or whatever, the Detroit Police Department has designated an area where they can be.”
There are only 50 tables for processing. In 2020 we had 134 tables. That made for more people, more challengers, more poll workers,” Baxter said. “Now at the table you have 300 ballots that you have to process, versus 3,000 ballots in 2020.”
The doorways are guarded by magnetometers. Media, poll workers and challengers must swipe a driver’s card, state ID or some other form of identification to get credentials.
He said a maximum number will be contained in the check-in system. “Once we max out on that number no one will be allowed entry, whether it’s the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the NAACP, the League of Women Voters or whoever they are.”
Electoral Challenger Joshua Winfrey in an Alley Behind the Elections Department Building: “It was dark after all,” he told reporters
The GOP challenger confronted a deputy clerk in an alley behind the Elections Department at a building that is 4 miles away from Huntington Place.
“All of our windows on the first floor of our building has been replaced with bulletproof glass,” Winfrey said. “We have uniformed and plain-clothed officers. The alley is no longer open.
That means poll workers should be able to leave the convention center much earlier than in 2020, shielding them, officials hope, from any disruptions by angry poll challengers.
