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. “You’ve gotta vote early…One thing I know is, the Democrats are gonna cheat.”

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.”

To reach those voters, however, Republicans largely appear to be winging it. The bulk of their ground game in the Midwest swing state has been left to Elon Musk’s America PAC, podcasts, and vibes. Democrats in Michigan, meanwhile, are pouring money and manpower into the state. The state Democratic party has more than $5 million in cash on hand compared to just $583,000 for the state GOP, which is still dealing with abysmal finances and substantial debt. The Harris campaign and the Michigan Democratic Party have also put a premium on undecided and low-propensity voters that they hope to reach with relational organizing, or individuals harnessing their personal networks to get out the vote.

And yet, even as the disparity between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump’s field strategy couldn’t be more drastic in Michigan, recent polling remains close—consistently either tied or within two points, on average, within the margin of error. The Trump campaign has forced the question of whether its lackadaisical-seeming approach is a poor man’s moneyball strategy that could actually work, either as an unconventional tactic or in spite of itself.

Instead of a traditional voter turnout operation led by the GOP nominee’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign is leaning into some not-so-cutting-edge technology and a podcast blitz to target younger men who are either sporadic voters or don’t vote at all.

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. The other, 10xVotes, which has been promoted by Tucker Carlson and the Michigan GOP, requires users to enter search queries for people they know, rather than providing them with 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.)

“I think it’s what happens when you let a bunch of grifters take over,” a Trumpworld source said of Musk’s seat-of-the-pants operation, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about internal discussions on the campaign’s lack of a voter turnout strategy. “Shit is always gonna produce shit.”

Musk’s PAC has continued doing most of the heavy lifting, carrying out the outsourced ground game for Trump like Never Back Down did for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was lambasted for it by Trump’s team. Musk has offered voters the chance to win $1 million by signing a petition-turned-sweepstakes supporting the First and Second Amendments and his door knockers get paid $30 per hour “with bonuses for performance.” But there are serious questions within Trump’s orbit over how effective the late effort will be.

“What happens is, you skim a bunch of money off the top, and then you hire the dumbest people and pay them a little bit of money,” the Trumpworld strategist said. “There’s no way of tracking whether it’s effective or not. It’s hard to track the output, and thus the effectiveness of the output.”

Victoria LaCivita, Trump’s Michigan communications director and the daughter of Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, described the campaign’s voter turnout operation as part of “the most sophisticated and modern campaign, ever. Our team is only expanding—we are adding new staff, offices, and volunteers weekly—with more enthusiasm, energy, and support from people and states that Democrats have taken for granted.”

A Trump campaign spokesperson also told WIRED they have “dozens of campaign offices all across the state, including the [Upper Peninsula], Detroit, Macomb, Oakland, Lansing, Livingston, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Burton,” along with 100 paid staff in Michigan, plus 6,000 “Trump captains,” and “countless volunteers in every corner of Michigan.”

A spokesperson for Michigan Republican senate candidate Mike Rogers’ campaign said they have 36 staffers with “several” field offices, aiming to hit “north of 70,000” doors per week.

Democrats have also claimed a robust voter turnout operation across 52 field offices and at least 375 staffers. But for Michigan Democrats hitting the pavement each weekend, they’ve been wondering when the Trump cavalry is supposedly coming.

“It’s been fascinating. It’s been weird? It’s been weird,” Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow, a Harris campaign surrogate who’s been deployed to speak in front of younger voters in battleground states, tells WIRED.

While canvassing, McMorrow says she’s seen some literature for the Trump and Rogers campaigns, as well as a few other local Republican candidates, but the first time running into a live human knocking on doors for Republicans came in the Downriver region just to the south of Detroit.

They were with Musk’s PAC, McMorrow says.

“This guy told one of the people on our team that he’s a Democrat,” says McMorrow, “but he’s taking the money and doing it anyway.”

America PAC did not return a request for comment from WIRED over their canvassing practices and whether they screen for partisan affiliation in who they hire.

And though there are those in Trump’s orbit who privately lament Musk’s role in the closing stages of the campaign, he did earn some begrudging praise.

“To his credit, he’s the only guy who’s giving away money and not asking for money,” the Trumpworld strategist said, pointing to the financial benefits of a billionaire floating the PAC instead of the Trump campaign or RNC paying an established firm to run point on field organizing.

“I think the problem is though,” they continued, “when you bring a lot of goofball figures around you, those types of people, shady characters do shady things.”

Musk’s PAC has already been notified by the Department of Justice that its petition sweepstakes may violate federal campaign finance law, according to a letter sent by the DOJ which was first reported by Tom LoBianco on his 24Sight newsletter.

Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes tells WIRED she doesn’t think door knocking is “the entire strategy” to reach undecided and low propensity voters, but she emphasized how much she thinks the state party’s network of door knocking groups is preferable to outsourcing the ground game.

“That’s the difference between what we’re doing and what the Republicans can’t do,” Barnes said, “because they haven’t built the operation to do it.”