Tag: Center for Tech and Civic Life

Zuckerberg-Backed Group Promotes $6 Million Election Grant from Left-Wing Nonprofit

Daily Caller News Foundation

A left-leaning organization backed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is promoting a $6 million election grant program to “support local election officials” from an influential left-wing nonprofit, The Federalist reported Friday.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) allegedly told election officials to participate in the “A More Responsive Government 2024 Grant Program” associated with the Institute for Responsive Government (IRG), according to emails obtained by The Federalist. The CTCL funneled $350 million to states across the nation in 2020, with Zuckerberg donating $328 million to the organization, according to Influence Watch.

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Commentary: ‘ZuckBucks’ Heads to Rural America in 2024

Daily Caller News Foundation

Money always finds a way. In the years following the 2020 election, dozens of states managed to ban private funding of elections. But even though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly promised not to pour more of his money into your local election office, this year, the “Zuckbucks” team is recommitted to spreading cash wherever they legally can.

Recall that in late 2020, Zuckerberg directed his charitable arm to pass $350 million through an obscure nonprofit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) to fund large and small election offices around the nation. Some politically important counties received millions of dollars while others did not. As of today, 28 states have since banned the practice. Despite the bans, the CTCL’s work continues. In fact, the bans guide cash along new paths of least resistance.

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Commentary: ‘Zuck Bucks’ Need to Be Stopped Cold

Daily Caller News Foundation

It is less than 90 days to Election Day, and right on queue the group behind the “Zuck Bucks” campaign of 2020 is back with a new scheme. This time, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is doling out millions in grant dollars to rural election administrators in 19 states.

Election officers beware. The group is trying to turn the government offices that run elections into bastions of partisan progressive activism. Election officials striving for nonpartisanship should steer clear.

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Georgia Election Official Seeking New Term Voted on Cases Involving His Lobbyist Clients

Just the News
Edward Lindsey

Georgia State Election Board (SEB) member Edward Lindsey is up for reconfirmation before the state House amid new revelations that he has voted on cases involving counties for which he is a lobbyist.

Lindsey, who was appointed to the SEB position on Jan. 7, 2022, is a lobbyist for both Cobb County and DeKalb County, according to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. The two counties are among the top five most populous in Georgia, which has 159 counties.

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Commentary: The Left’s Ridiculous Disinformation on Tainted Zuck Bucks

Admin
Zuck Bucks

Anyone who’s followed the Mark Zuckerberg “Zuck bucks” story since 2020 has witnessed some spectacular acrobatics from the left.

First, it was denial that a partisan billionaire was trying to privatize the election in swing states. Then, when Democrats unseated President Trump, NPR and others praised Zuck bucks for “saving” the election. When the 2022 midterms came, the cry was for more private funding to “rehabilitate” democracy. Now the media’s latest stop: gaslighting the public into believing any criticism of leftist “dark money” is just conservative propaganda, rather than one of the worst election innovations of our time.

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Two North Carolina Counties Withdraw from ‘Zuckerbucks’ Alliance as 2024 Election Cycle Begins

Just the News

Two North Carolina counties left a Zuckerbucks nonprofit — where private money is injected into public election administration — as the 2024 election cycle began, citing time commitment as the reason for leaving.

Brunswick and Forsyth counties in North Carolina have left the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), after joining it last year.

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Honest Elections Project Meets With State Legislators at ALEC’s Annual Convention in Scottsdale, Proposes Agenda Including Stopping Ranked Choice Voting

Rachel Alexander

The American Legislative Exchange Council held their national annual conference in Scottsdale last week, which included a pre-session for legislators with the Honest Elections Project (HEP). HEP is focusing on three issues relating to elections currently, and is proposing draft model legislation that legislators can introduce on a few issues. One is Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which is gearing up to be a huge fight on the 2024 ballot in Arizona.

Three progressive groups are pushing RCV in Arizona. However, the Arizona Legislature has also referred a proposition to the ballot in 2024 that would stop RCV. HEP has extensively looked into how RCV works, and determined that it ends up putting far left Democrats into office, not moderates as some would expect. HEP’s fact sheet went over several races where it was used and showed how it facilitates this, undermining the Constitution’s principle of one person, one vote.

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After Evers Vetoes, Wisconsin Lawmakers Propose Constitutional Amendment to Ban Private ‘Zuckerbucks’ Election Funding in 2024

Admin

Wisconsin voters may be able to ban “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — from their elections next year, before the 2024 general election.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) poured nearly $350 million into local elections offices managing the 2020 election, with most of the funds donated to the nonprofit by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The nonprofit has claimed its 2020 election grants — colloquially known as “Zuckerbucks” — were allocated without partisan preference to make voting safer amid the pandemic.

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Wisconsin Lawmakers Introduce Second Go at Constitutional Amendment to Ban Zuckerbucks in Election Administration

M.D. Kittle

Looking to get around Democrat Governor Tony Evers’ veto pen, Republican lawmakers have introduced the second consideration of a constitutional amendment to bar the use of private funds in election administration.

Passage would send the proposed amendment to referendum, letting voters — not the liberal governor — decide if controversial “Zuckerbucks”-like funding of elections is legal in Wisconsin.

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Commentary: Everyone Can Agree on Election Integrity

Admin
Polling Place

At first glance, some Americans could mistakenly conclude that election integrity safeguards are deeply unpopular. After all, liberal politicians and the mainstream media regularly denounce commonsense measures like photo ID laws and routine voter roll cleanups.

No matter what they claim or how loudly they claim it, these voices do not speak for the majority of Americans. As recent polling conducted by Honest Elections Project Action shows beyond all doubt, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans embrace commonsense voting laws that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

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Senate Panel Recommends Schmidt as Pennsylvania Secretary of State, Votes for Anti-ERIC Bill

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania’s Senate State Government Committee on Monday recommended confirming secretary of the commonwealth nominee Al Schmidt.

The panel voted 10-1 to back the Republican acting secretary and former Philadelphia city commissioner. In a subsequent, off-the-floor meeting, the committee approved a bill to facilitate removal of Pennsylvania from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a controversial multi-state data-sharing program supporters say helps states maintain accurate voter rolls. The bill would permit the state to use the Social Security death database and change-of-address records to identify voter-registry errors.

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Georgia Lawmakers Sign Off on ‘Zuckerbucks’ Ban

The Center Square

Georgia lawmakers signed off on legislation banning counties from soliciting or accepting donations to help administer elections.

Senate Bill 222, a so-called “Zuckerbucks” ban, specifies that public funds must pay for election administration costs. It also prohibits government employees and elections officials from receiving gifts valued at more than $500 from third-party groups to conduct primaries or elections.

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Pennsylvania’s Improved Voter Registry ‘Behind Schedule’

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania’s top election officials this week informed lawmakers that the process of replacing the state’s voter-records system is “behind schedule” but assured them his agency is prioritizing its completion. 

Responding to questions from members of the state House Appropriations Committee in preparation for drafting the Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget, Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Al Schmidt said 23 counties are testing the initial version of the new SUREVote system.

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States, Counties Clash over ‘Zuckerbucks’-Like New Sources of Private Election Funding

Just the News

As “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — make a comeback, states and municipalities are clashing over whether the funds should be accepted or banned.

While many states and counties across the country have either restricted or banned the use of private money to fund public elections offices, a nonprofit with progressive Democrat ties that served as the key link in the 2020 Zuckerbucks funding chain is still finding loopholes in some counties as states seek to tighten up their laws.

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Georgia State Senate Passes Bill to Close ‘Zuckbucks’ Loophole

Just the News

The Georgia Senate has passed a bill to prohibit local election offices from using private funding to conduct elections, after election officials reportedly used a loophole to accept the money.

The bill stipulates “costs and expenses related to conducting primaries, elections, runoffs, or other undertakings authorized or required by [state law] shall be paid from lawfully appropriated public funds.”

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Star News Exclusive: Records Show Green Bay City Officials Installed Secret Recording Devices, Council Member Wants Resignations

M.D. Kittle

Records obtained by The Star News Network show Green Bay city officials installed at least three audio recording devices in City Hall — without notifying the City Council or the public. 

Alderman Chris Wery, who represents Green Bay’s 8th District, described the secret recordings as the kind of “Big Brother stuff” found in a George Orwell novel. 

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Michigan County Spurns $1.5 Million in Private Election Funding Amid Growing ‘Zuckerbucks’ Backlash

Just the News

A clerk in Ottawa County, Mich., has declined a $1.5 million election grant from a nonprofit linked to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, citing qualms about accepting private funds for public election administration, as a growing number of states and localities across the nation are moving to refuse, restrict or ban so-called “Zuckerbucks.”

Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck announced Tuesday that he was removing the elections division of his office from consideration for funding by the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, after reporting in November that the county was a finalist in the network’s “Centers for Election Excellence” program.

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Commentary: Big Philanthropy Advances as a Big Player in the Private Funding of Public Elections

RealClearWire

Echoing the private financing of public elections that critics saw as heavily favoring Democrats in 2020, some of America’s richest foundations are pouring money into a similar effort again, in the face of more organized conservative resistance.  

A nonprofit group called the Audacious Project, whose supporters include the Gates and MacArthur foundations and the Bridgespan Group, a consultant whose clients include Planned Parenthood, has committed $80 million to a progressive organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to provide grant funding to run local elections.   

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Big Tech-Aligned Group Wants to Go ‘Nationwide’ in Shaping Election Operations

Admin

A Big Tech-aligned group funded through liberal dark money is moving to expand “nationwide,” even though about half the states have banned using private money to run elections. 

The Center for Tech and Civic Life launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence in partnership with organizations funded by the liberal Arabella Advisors and Democracy Fund, as The Daily Signal previously reported. The tech center is the same group that distributed $350 million in election-administration grants in 2020 from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.

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Benson’s Argument in Zuck Bucks Lawsuit ‘Wrong,’ Says Attorney Representing Voters

Admin

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is “wrong” in claiming that she bears no responsibility for Michigan election officials accepting millions in grants from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to underwrite the cost of the 2020 general election, an attorney representing voters in a lawsuit naming Benson says.

“Evidence confirms that Benson was aware of this private funding scheme and even encouraged election officials to participate,” Mark “Thor” Hearne, special counsel with the Thomas More Society, told Great Lakes Wire.

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Pennsylvania Governor Signs Compromise Bill Banning Outside Election Funding

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) this week signed legislation banning nongovernmental entities from issuing grants for election administration and also creating a state-run grant program to meet such administrative needs.

State Senators Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-Jacobus) sponsored the measure in response to revelations that left-leaning nonprofits like the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) bestowed large sums of money on localities across the nation in 2020. (Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, contributed $350 million to the organization that year.) Most CTCL grants going to Pennsylvania counties subsidized election administration in Democrat-heavy areas.

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Corman to Bannon: Election Integrity Will Be Paramount in Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Administration

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore and gubernatorial candidate Jake Corman (R-Bellefonte) appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room Thursday to discuss his proposed reforms to make elections more secure in his state.

Corman promised to call for a special legislative session on election-related legislation the day he takes office. Items he said he intends to address foremost are requiring identification of all voters, rescinding a state policy allowing people to vote by mail without submitting an excuse, banning absentee-ballot drop boxes and banning the use of private grants for election administration.

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Pennsylvania Senate Passes Election Integrity Measures

Bradley Vasoli

Pennsylvania Republican Senators this week celebrated their chamber’s passage of two pieces of election-security legislation.

One bill, sponsored by state Sen. Cris Dush (R-Wellsboro), would prohibit the use of drop boxes to collect mail-in and absentee ballots. The other, sponsored by Sens. Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-Jacobus), would bar state or county employees from approving the use of private donations to fund election administration.

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Bossie Releases ‘Zuckerbucks’ Film, as Over 40K Shown to Have Bypassed Wisconsin Voter ID Rules in 2020

Admin

With pro-Trump activist and political filmmaker David Bossie premiering a new documentary on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago about the influence of “Zuckerbucks” in swaying the 2020 election in battleground states like Wisconsin, an election integrity watchdog group has documented that more than 40,000 absentee ballots in that state were cast in 2020 without providing ID by voters self-identifying as “indefinitely confined.”

In “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” Bossie, president of conservative nonprofit Citizens United, explores how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg injected nearly $400 million into the 2020 presidential election through two left-leaning voter turnout nonprofits — the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR) — “with most of the funds funneled to government elections offices in critically important jurisdictions for Joe Biden — to finance get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at defeating” Trump, according press materials for the film.

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GOP Philadelphia City Commissioner Opposes Restricting Third-Party Election Grants

Bradley Vasoli
Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill and Lisa Baker

At a Pennsylvania Senate hearing Tuesday, Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein joined his two Democratic colleagues in supporting continued allowance of private grants for election administration.

Left-wing nonprofits, particularly the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), awarded many such grants to election offices in Pennsylvania and across America in 2020. The organization received $350 million that year from Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

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Lawsuit Alleges Michigan Secretary of State Allowed Facebook to Sway 2020 Election

Peter D'Abrosca

A conservative group in Michigan is duking it out in court with Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) claiming that the elected official allowed money from Silicon Valley titan Facebook to have a partisan impact on the state’s 2020 elections. 

“This is what happened in 2020,” co-founder of the Michigan Conservative Coalition Marian Sheridan said in a press release.  “Zuck Bucks, which is private money, was used by elected officials through public entities to promote voting, but only promoted among selected potential voter groups.  Not to all citizens.  Every voter should have received the benefit of a fair portion of the funds unfairly used by elected officials.  They cannot selectively promote anything.”

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Election Watchdog: ‘Not Ready for 2024’ Elections, ‘Still Have Many of the Same Problems’ from 2020

Admin

Election integrity issues from the 2020 presidential election have yet to be resolved, “so we are not ready for 2024,” Phill Kline, Director of the Amistad Project, warned on Monday.

Kline was asked by “Just the News, Not Noise” TV show cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head if election integrity issues had been solved after the 2020 election. “No, we still have many of the same problems,” he replied, explaining that this is “because the legislatures have not taken the time to understand the problem.”

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Founder of Zuckerberg’s Election Group Took China-Funded Fellowship at Harvard Think Tank

Admin

The founder of the controversial, Mark Zuckerberg-backed election group Center for Tech and Civic Life was a fellow at a Harvard University think tank which receives funding from Chinese Communist Party-linked firms.

The CTCL was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a 2015-16 Technology and Democracy Fellow at Kennedy School of Government’s Ash Center, which is partly funded by several Chinese Communist Party-affiliated enterprises, according to the National Pulse.

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Pennsylvania Bill to Restrict Private Money in Election Administration Passes House

Bradley Vasoli

Republican legislation to stop private organizations from donating selectively to Pennsylvania localities’ election activities passed the state House of Representatives along party lines yesterday. 

State Reps. Eric Nelson (R-Greensburg), Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) and James Struzzi (R-Indiana) offered the bill after revelations that the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) issued grants to counties last year, with much more money reaching Democrat-heavy areas. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan contributed $350 million to CTCL in 2020. Former Obama Foundation Fellow Tiana Epps-Johnson serves as the organization’s executive director.

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Facebook-Linked Grants Backed Democrats in Pennsylvania in 2020

Admin

A new report reveals that multiple private grants tied to the Big Tech giant Facebook overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates and counties in the state of Pennsylvania in 2020, as reported by the New York Post.

The report by the publication Broad + Liberty (BL) reveals that one such grant, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), spent more money on turning out registered voters in Democrat-majority counties than Republican-majority counties. In addition to the increased push for voter turnout, these counties were given a jumpstart on this grant and information on how to apply by state officials.

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Pennsylvania State Senators Legislating to Prevent Privatizing Election Administration

Bradley Vasoli
Kristin Phillips-Hill

Pennsylvania lawmakers plan to introduce a measure banning private organizations from funding election administration in the Keystone State.

The bill’s sponsors, state Sens. Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-Jacobus) have cited the role that the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) played in election operations in Philadelphia and other Democratic-leaning counties in 2020. CTCL has been funded significantly by Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

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Attorney General Garland Denies Knowledge of Claims that Zuckerberg ‘Bought’ 2020 Election

Peter D'Abrosca

During Wednesday’s hours-long grilling of Attorney General Merrick Garland by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which mainly focused on the events of January 6 and Garland’s directive to investigate parents who speak School Board meetings, one critical question went almost unnoticed. 

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) questioned Garland about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $400 million spending spree during the 2020 election. The money was allocated through Zuckerberg-funded non-profits the Center for Tech and Civic Life, described by Influence Watch as an “organization [that] pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration,” and the Center for Election Innovation and Research. 

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Commentary: Election Rules Have to Mean Something

RealClearWire

The rule of law must be respected for liberty to be protected.  Changing the rules to achieve a desired outcome undermines both, and when this is done in the administration of elections, democracy itself is imperiled.

Unfortunately, the left shows no compunction about wielding power for partisan advantage, especially when it comes to election administration. They’ve even gone so far as to create new rules to suit their purposes, regardless of whether they possess the authority to do so.

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