The Patriot Post® · Zuckerberg's Outsized Election Interference
During the 2020 election cycle, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with his wife, Priscilla Chan, spent hundreds of millions in electioneering efforts backing Democrat candidates. The Zuckerbergs donated an eye-popping $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a leftist organization that in turn gave the money in grants to some 2,500 municipalities in 49 states.
Investigative journalist Steve Miller reports, “In exchange for the money, elections divisions agreed to conduct their elections according to conditions set out by the CTCL, which is led by former members of the New Organizing Institute, a training center for progressive groups and Democratic campaigns.”
Not only did Zuckerberg give money, he also used his social media platform to provide support for his favored leftist political agenda.
“Facebook, with the CTCL, was also part of the effort, providing a guide and webinar for election officials on how to engage voters,” Miller notes. “Included were directions to report ‘voter interference’ to Facebook authorities. The company also provided designated employees in six regions of the U.S. to handle questions. Together, the groups strategically targeted voters and waged a voter assistance campaign aimed at low-income and minority residents who typically shun election participation, helping Democratic candidates win key spots all over the U.S.”
As Hayden Dublois, a researcher at the Foundation of Government Accountability, observed, “This private funding has never been done before. We hear about dark money and corporations buying ads, but never have we seen hundreds of millions of private dollars going into the conducting of elections. And states didn’t have any laws on the books to stop it.”
One of CTCL’s biggest successes was pushing for municipalities to adopt the Democrats’ bulk-mail ballot scheme. One example Miller notes was that “the Zuckerberg-funded CTCL allowed elections departments to use grant money to buy vehicles to transport ‘voter navigators.’” He adds, “The election department in Green Bay, Wis., promised as part of its CTCL grant of $1 million that it would employ the vote navigators to ‘assist voters, potentially at their front doors, to answer questions … and witnessing absentee ballot signatures.’”
Some of these “voter navigators” engaged in a process known as “curing absentee ballots.” This apparently entailed “fixing” ballots that had been incorrectly filled out. Many states allow for voters to fix such ballots, though it is not mandatory that voters are contacted if their ballots need fixing, due to lack of time and manpower. CTCL took the opportunity to fund and operate the “ballot curing” endeavors, which tellingly focused on boosting Democrat voting demographics.
“In Georgia,” Miller found, “the grants were used to expand curbside voting and conduct ‘the necessary voter outreach … to promote absentee voting and encourage higher percentages of our electors to vote absentee,’ according to a grant application.”
The CTCL also focused on boosting Democrat voter turnout in Democrat-friendly areas in an effort to overcome Republican margins. For example, Miller points out, “President Trump took the reliably Republican state of Missouri in 2020, but Joe Biden increased the Democratic presidential vote and won Boone County by 7,000 votes. Hillary Clinton had a 5,000-vote margin in 2016.” Similarly, “In Webb County, Texas, which received $2.8 million from CTCL, voter registrations increased by 10,000 over 2016. The new recruits in the South Texas county voted for Biden by a two to one margin.”
The great irony in this is that Democrats have long decried private and “dark” money in politics. Yet somehow it’s no surprise to find that they are the party most guilty of engaging in the practice.