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Before Mark Zuckerberg poured an unprecedented $350 million into the Center for Technology and Civic Life to help state and local officials run the 2020 election, the nonprofit group first distributed millions of grants to election officials in key counties and cities around the country. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
While Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made public their $350 million donation to CTLC on September 1, 2020, donors who provided millions of dollars for election aid distributed earlier that summer are unknown thanks to a law that allows nonprofit groups to take the cut. donor information.
In Pennsylvania, that money is selectively in Democratic-leaning districts, Republican lawmakers and the centre-right watchdog investigator testified on Tuesday.
At a hearing in the Pennsylvania State Senate, Republican lawmakers proposed legislation to end private funding of the election, citing that millions of dollars provided to key state jurisdictions come from unknown sources. The state received approximately $15 million in grants from anonymously sourced donations to CTLC.
State Senator Lisa Baker sponsored one of the bills to end special election funding, keeping the corrected pages of CTLC’s tax disclosure forms at the hearing, including a page listing a $1.4 million donation alongside a blacked out name.
“We don’t know who these people are,” said Ms. Baker. “And for me, a person willing to give $1.4 million in donations to an organization that funds public elections. I want to know who these people are.”
CTLC did not respond to a request for comment.
In Pennsylvania, government officials appear to have only contacted Democratic-leaning counties to apply for grants that are donated anonymously, according to a study by Broad and Liberty, a Philadelphia-based centre-right think tank.
Locations that received anonymous funding from CTCL included the city of Philadelphia, which received more than $10 million in awards, and the Counties of Delaware, Chester, Montgomery—all densely populated areas where Democratic voters outnumber GOP voters, Todd Shepherd, an investigative and journalist for Broad and Liberty Wednesday testified on the day.
Some of these jurisdictions later received additional funding from Zuckerberg’s $350 million pot through the CTLC.
But before that, they were selectively invited by Governor Tom Wolf, who became a Democrat in the summer of 2020, and officials working for the governor-appointed secretary of state to apply to the much smaller pool of CTLC funding.
Access came before September 1, before the Zuckerbergs announced their plans to donate $250 million to CTLC. This was the first of two installments totaling $350 million aimed at helping the Zuckerbergs facilitate the 2020 election during the Covid pandemic.
Government officials invited Allegheny County, another blue jurisdiction, to apply for CTLC funds, but county officials did not do so until after the Zuckerberg donation.
The CTLC operates as a neutral group advocating electoral modernization. The founders are Tina Epps-Johnson, Donny Bridges and Whitney May, who formerly ran a training center for “left-of-center digital activists,” according to the conservative think tank Capital Research Center.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s massive private funding has opened the grant process to jurisdictions across the country. But ahead of the donation announcement on September 1, election officials seemed unaware that the additional money was coming and urged counties to selectively apply for smaller funds, at least in Pennsylvania, Mr. Shepherd reported.
“All of the counties approached before September 1 were blue counties,” Shepherd said. “I haven’t seen any emails before September 1 that these two government departments are working or contacting any ‘red’ counties.”
According to Mr. Shepherd’s testimony, state officials have also provided additional assistance to certain blue counties that receive early grants to help them maximize the amount of money awarded by the CTLC.
Mr Shepherd’s public registration requests revealed that, in some cases, additional assistance to blue counties was provided by Democratic political agents who were “involved and raised important ethical questions.”
An email received by Mr. Shepherd through a public records request indicates Marc Solomon, working on behalf of the Center for Safe and Modern Choices, is involved in the CTLC grant administration. “The voting system makes elections more efficient and secure.” According to the Capital Research Center, it’s a project of the New Venture Fund, which advocates for “comprehensive electoral changes, including state laws that automatically register voters with government agencies.”
New Venture is run by Arabella Advisors, a liberal “black money” group.
In an email about a grant application from officials in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Mr. Solomon suggested to CTLC staff to increase the county’s demand for $1.2 million, calling it “the suburbs of Philly, the state’s third-largest county!” she cried.
According to county records for May 2020, registered Democrats in Montgomery County outnumber registered Republicans with approximately 85,000 voters.
“This raises my curiosity and suspicion that the grants were an effort to get rid of the vote, not a Covid security effort,” Mr Shepherd told MPs.
Overall, Pennsylvania received $25 million from CTLC to run the 2020 election. All of the money came from Mr. Zuckerberg and anonymous donors. More money was spent on Democratic voters than Republicans, a pattern that CTLC donations have replicated nationwide.
Wisconsin has also received millions of dollars from CTLC’s anonymous donors. CTLC announced in July 2020 that it had donated $6.3 million to Wisconsin’s five largest all-Democratic cities, prior to the Zuckerberg funding.
The money came at the request of the mayors of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine, who were invited to apply for the grant.
The mayors said the funds will be used in part to conduct elections safely and reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19. In a June requesting statement, mayors fund the funds “to identify best practices; innovate to efficiently and effectively educate our residents on how to exercise their voting rights; be deliberate and strategic in reaching our historically disenfranchised residents and communities; and, above all, securing the right to vote in our dense and diverse communities.”
The Milwaukee-based Institute for Law and Freedom, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit, found that most of the anonymous grant money was spent on mail-in voting and absentee voting equipment, survey worker recruitment and training, temporary staff, election management equipment. and voter education.
According to the institute, less than 5% of the funding was used to pay for personal protective equipment.
in Pennsylvania. Recipients of the summer funding from CTLC used some of the money to open expensive satellite election offices, which greatly expanded voting access in these jurisdictions.
Only six jurisdictions have opened satellite offices in the state, and five of these have received early CTLC grants. Early CTLC funding was offered to Bucks County, a sixth jurisdiction, but was rejected, citing concerns about anonymous funding.
Philadelphia used some of the grant money to open 17 satellite selection facilities. Offices allowed people to register to vote and to search and return mailed ballots. The facilities were open seven days a week from 21 October until election day.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats criticized the testimony and rejected the proposed law to eliminate private funding of the elections. They argued that the government did not provide sufficient funds to hold the 2020 elections, forcing authorities to find ways to adapt to the increase in voters during a pandemic.
They said that the money did not unfairly affect the result.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa M. Deeley, for example, voted 5,000 more Republicans in 2020 than in 2016, and 600 fewer Democrats in 2020 than in 2016.
“I believe these bills are the result of ongoing misinformation about the 2020 presidential election, and that election officials are trying to make their lives harder to score political points among those who believe the ‘big lie’ about 2020,” Ms Deeley said. He said, referring to former President Donald Trump’s allegation that the election was rigged in favor of President Biden. “The election was not stolen. There was no stealing. Counties receiving funding to offset election costs had no effect on the outcome of that election.”
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