Before an election, checking that you are still registered to vote is a sensible thing to do. The federal government runs a page for exactly that, at vote.gov, and it points you to your own state's system.

Vote.gov asks you for nothing. Its privacy policy says the Election Assistance Commission "does not collect personally-identifiable information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information to us," and that "no cookies used by EAC ever store any information that may be used to identify you personally."

Elon Musk is spending heavily to send people somewhere else.

Judd Legum of Popular Information documented on September 8 what happens at votesafe.org, the registration-check site run by America PAC, Musk's super PAC, and promoted in ads across the states where the midterms will be decided.

What the site takes

Vote.gov collects nothing. Votesafe.org collects:

• Your first, middle and last name
• Your date of birth
• Your full home address
• Your email address
• Your cell phone number
• Your IP address and location, used to work out your city, ZIP code, approximate latitude and longitude, time zone and internet provider
• Your browser, operating system, screen size and device language
• Which website sent you there
• Every link you click and every page you look at
• Your voter registration status, taken from a voter file held by America PAC or its vendors rather than from your state's actual records
• Your district and ballot

That is not a registration check. That is a file on you.

The sentence that disappeared on August 29

Until recently, votesafe.org promised limits. Its privacy policy said:

Personal Identifying Information collected via the www.votesafe.org will only be used to support America PAC's activities, and it will not be shared with any advertisers, political organizations, or third parties not directly affiliated with America PAC.

On August 29, 2026, that language was removed.

The replacement lets America PAC "share" or "sell" your personal information to "our business partners." What it may sell includes "where you are registered to vote, whether you are registered to vote and how you submit your vote" — the policy says the PAC may "sell this information to our business partners, where permitted by law." Those business partners may then pass your information on to others still.

It may also sell the conclusions it draws about you. The policy covers selling "inferences" about your "psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude."

And if you give the site your phone number, you agree to receive calls and texts — not only from America PAC, but from its "affiliates and related entities as well as third parties."

Where your information goes as you use the site

Legum found the site is already wired to hand your details to a list of companies as you use it:

• Your street address goes to Facebook and Google.
• Your name, email, phone number, ZIP code and date of birth go to an America PAC server that feeds Facebook's ad-matching system, which uses them to find your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Your contact details also go to Google's ad system.
• A scrambled version of your email goes to The Trade Desk, an advertising firm, which builds an identifier that follows you across websites, apps and streaming TV.
• Your activity is shared with X, the social network Musk owns, which tries to match it to an X account.
• Your email goes to Iterable, a marketing company that sends emails and texts.
• A "device fingerprint" is built from your device's technical traits, so you can be tracked even after you delete your cookies.

What it is for

Musk has pledged to spend more than $100 million on the midterms, focused on turnout. In one week alone, America PAC spent more than $180,000 promoting votesafe.org on Meta. Some of those ads are simple reminders to vote. Others attack "socialists" or name specific Democratic Senate candidates. On Sunday the PAC launched YouTube ads attacking Democratic candidates, nearly all of which promote votesafe.org at the end.

This is the same operation that is planning to spend up to $120 million across eight states, including a campaign to keep Susan Collins in the Senate.

It is being handed to other groups too

Votesafe.org is not only a website. It is a platform other groups can put their own name on, with the data flowing back to America PAC's servers.

The Sentinel Action Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, used it to build its own registration site and then spent $650,000 advertising it during Fox News coverage of the State of the Union. Its president, Jessica Anderson, said the site made registering "easier" and made sure "voter information isn't going into the hands of extremist Democrat organizations." The information goes to Musk's super PAC instead. Popular Information reports that this connection had not been reported anywhere before.

A second group, Ready to Register, runs on the same platform. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections said Ready to Register "sent mailings to an unknown number of citizens with an outdated voter registration application which includes four political parties that are no longer recognized in North Carolina." The board also said it had "received reports that mailings are being sent to deceased individuals and that the group may be using outdated voter data," and that "QR codes on the mailings may cause information from other people to pre-populate on a form." The Washington Post reported in July that the source code of Ready to Register's website "links to another group affiliated with Musk's political outfit, America PAC."

Why this matters beyond the privacy policy

Republicans on this site have had a great deal to say about who can be trusted with voter data. Pennsylvania's Stacy Garrity said she would "absolutely" be more cooperative with a federal request for her state's voter rolls. New Jersey's Jeff Van Drew threatened subpoenas over errors in his state's registration system.

The same movement is now routing millions of people through a private site that gathers more about them than any state ever asked for, and reserves the right to sell it.

If you want to check your registration, vote.gov does the same job without asking for any of it.

What the record shows

Votesafe.org, run by Elon Musk's America PAC and promoted with more than $180,000 of Meta advertising in a single week, collects a voter's name, date of birth, home address, phone number, email, device details and every click. On August 29, 2026 its privacy policy dropped the promise that this data would not be shared, and now permits America PAC to sell it — including whether someone is registered and how they submit their vote — to unnamed "business partners," along with inferences about their psychology and intelligence. The same platform has been rebranded for the Heritage Foundation's super PAC and for a group North Carolina election officials say mailed an outdated registration application listing parties the state no longer recognizes, and that they received reports was sending mail to deceased people. The federal government's own vote.gov does the same job and asks for no personal information at all.

Source

Judd Legum, The hidden dangers of Musk's votesafe.org, Popular Information, September 8, 2026. Image: Popular Information.