A leftist nonprofit group that funded the private takeover of government election offices during the 2020 presidential election just announced its new round of beneficiaries for the 2024 cycle.
The Center for Tech and Civic Life — one of two groups that funneled $328 million (colloquially termed “Zuckbucks“) from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the blue counties of swing states to mobilize potential Democratic voters and swing the race for Joe Biden — has said it will distribute $80 million in election grants in the next five years to the following counties and cities:
- Contra Costa County, California
- Shasta County, California
- Greenwich, Connecticut
- Kane County, Illinois
- Macoupin County, Illinois
- Ottawa County, Michigan
- Clark County, Nevada
- Brunswick County, North Carolina
- Forsyth County, North Carolina
- Madison, Wisconsin
According to The Associated Press, the grants “will vary based on the size of each jurisdiction, from $50,000 for those with fewer than 5,000 registered voters to $3 million for those with more than 1 million voters.” There are hardly any restrictions on how the counties can spend the money, but there are also no publicly available details about what exactly they will use it for.
CTCL did not specify how it chose these counties as recipients for grant funding. Most of the counties and cities picked lean heavily Democratic (such as Clark, Contra Costa, Madison, Ottawa, Greenwich, Kane, and Forsyth) and are located in swing states, while the others are smaller red counties (Macoupin, Brunswick, and Shasta) that exist in a solid blue or swing state. Given that the size of the grants will vary based on the size of each county, the blue counties and cities will receive more funding than the red counties due to the size of their populations — a strategic move on CTCL’s part.
Back in 2020, CTCL also divided its grants based on population — though not evenly per capita — handing the more populous, Democratic-dominated counties almost all the cash. According to the Capital Research Center, CTCL “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for Biden.” For example, in Georgia, CTCL spent $1.41 per capita in Trump-leaning red counties and $5.33 in Biden-leaning blue ones. This discrepancy existed in all the major swing states during 2020. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty estimates CTCL grants added an extra 8,000 votes for Biden in Wisconsin.
While several states have since banned the private funding of government election offices in the wake of the “Zuckbucks” revelation, some states’ Democratic governors have instead vetoed legislation to that effect, including Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Now certain counties in these states have been named recipients of CTCL’s 2024 grants.
Of particular note is the city of Madison, Wisconsin. One of the five most populous — and blue — cities in the Badger State, Madison was a key recipient of “ZuckBucks” in 2020 (of the $10 million CTCL sent Wisconsin in 2020, $8.5 million went to the five Democratic cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine). But as I reported back in November, CTCL and election officials in Madison are still working closely together:
Per a September 2021 email between CTCL advisers and an election official in Madison, Wisconsin — a state whose Democrat governor vetoed legislation banning “Zuckbucks” twice — CTCL advisers discussed the agenda of an upcoming Sept. 29 meeting unveiling CTCL’s “strategic plan.” This scheme included setting local election standards, “supporting select [election] departments with grants and technical assistance,” keeping up “partner endorsements and hundreds of grants for implementation,” and “advocate[ing] for increased government funding.” The email states that while CTCL has already “supported nearly 3,000 departments though our trainings, resources, and 2020 grant-making,” its goal is to have such standards implemented nationwide by 2026 to “reach over 8,000 local election departments.”
What the emails between Madison election officials and CTCL show is that CTCL has ambitious plans to take over 8,000 local election departments across the country by 2026 (under the cover of the innocuous-sounding “U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence”). These 10 initial recipients of the CTCL funds for 2024 are just the beginning of this plan.
“Mark Zuckerberg has joined forces with other liberal groups to execute a five-year plan to once again infiltrate and influence elections across the country. Their plan is fully-funded — $80 million in private funds will be pumped into state election operations with no transparency or accountability to voters,” Madeline Malisa, senior fellow for the Foundation for Government Accountability, told The Federalist. “It’s Zuckerbucks 2.0, and it guarantees a repeat performance of the same problems and concerns brought to light after the 2020 election.”
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