The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has offered Americans $47 for each swing state voter they recruit to his effort to elect Donald Trump.
Democratic groups have started paying at least $160 to more than 75,000 voters who agree to contact dozens of their friends and relatives with requests to support Kamala Harris.
In Philadelphia, a nonprofit plans to mail 102,000 copies of a comic book this weekend to every voter under the age of 32, featuring the Liberty Knights, a superhero squad that defeats Dr. Mayhem’s quest to steal the city’s spirit, entomb it in ruby shards and stop the youth from voting.
For those who would still rather party than do politics, there are free concerts, street festivals, coat drives, tailgates and daytime raves popping up near early voting centers in key states that blur the difference. Other operations are hiring thousands of people and organizing many more volunteers to knock on doors, place phone calls and share social media about how to vote.
None of these get-out-the-vote efforts are the work of the presidential campaigns or political parties. They belong instead to a vast, shadow machinery built by partisans often under nonpartisan banners to provide the final nudge that delivers the White House by mobilizing unlikely voters in about seven states. Funded largely without public disclosure, through local outfits and national networks, most of the operations have been lying in wait for years in preparation for this moment.