Democrats want to allow private money for public elections to continue. Republicans want to limit this practice, as they claim it gave Joe Biden a unfair advantage in 2020’s presidential race.
So far, at least 10 Republican-controlled states have passed laws to prohibit or limit the use of private money in public elections. These include the swing state of Arizona, Florida Georgia, Georgia, and Ohio. North Carolina is another swing state. The Democratic Governor. Roy Cooper, along with other Democratic governors, vetoed such legislation.
In 2020, more than $400 million was donated by nonprofits to support the work of state and local election boards and get out the votes. The majority of the funding was approximately $350 million came from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, distributed primarily through the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a Chicago-based progressive-led group that includes former operatives of President Barack Obama.
Democrats and others argue that such money is necessary in order to support the work for underfunded election boards, which are now facing additional challenges from the pandemic. Republicans claim that the private grants were disproportionally allocated to counties won by Biden. This mismatch could have a negative impact on their chances of winning future elections.
“Our elections should never be for sale, but they were in 2020,” Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., said last month, calling the private funding a “partisan exercise.”
The Center for Tech and Civic Life explains that the grants are available. were available to any entity that applied. The money was used to pay for get-out-the vote efforts and to count the mail-in ballots. In some casesIt allowed Democratic operatives in key state to assist with the election’s management, including the counting and counting of votes.
The center was “very lenient regarding what we could spend the money on,” Deb Cox, a Lowndes County, Ga., elections supervisor, told RealClearInvestigations in May. With some of the grant, the county paid off a $15,000 bill. “They put virtually no restrictions on it, as long as it relates to the election.”
The center reports that the center distributed the grants to election offices in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Included in its election funding, it said, was $25 million from the New Venture Fund, a progressive nonprofit affiliated with Arabella AdvisorsCoordinates with a politically liberal, so-called “dark money” network.
With federal election funding distributed primarily based on voting-age population, most money tends to flow to logistically challenged cities and larger counties—often Democrat-run. This was true in both 2020 and 2018, when Congress approved hundreds upon millions of dollars for election security upgrades. The transparency laws that govern federal spending didn’t cover the outsized private grants in 2020.
The Capital Research Center, a conservative group that describes its study of election 2020 as “exposing how one billionaire privatized a presidential election,” estimates that in Georgia, the Zuckerberg-aligned center gave $5.06 per capita in counties that went for Biden and 98 cents in counties that went for Trump.
Another swing state is Pennsylvania. The group estimates that the center paid $3.11 per person in counties that went to Biden, while Trump received 57 cents per head. The breakdown was $5.83 per capita for Biden counties and $1.29 per capita for Trump counties in Arizona, according to the group.
The Center for Tech and Civic Life’s funding allocation “reflects those who chose to apply,” its executive director, Tiana Epps-Johnson, told the Associated Press. “Every eligible election department that was verified as legitimate was approved for a grant,” the center said on its website. Epps Johnson didn’t respond to an email asking for an interview.
Interested parties are monitoring the issue ahead of this year’s midterms. According to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice, 19 states have enacted 34 laws to “make it harder” for Americans to vote. It says 25 states have enacted 62 new laws that make it easier to vote, including expanded mail-ballot drop-off points and less stringent mail-ballot verification. The Brennan Center declined to answer a request for interview.
According to the, 27 states passed legislation this year to make mail-in voting easier. Voting Rights Lab, This state declined to interview me. Many are returning to pre-pandemic policy that were effected when a flurry states claimed it was unsafe for 2020 voters to cast their ballots. Other new rules include stricter monitoring of mail in ballot procedures and bans or limitations on private grants.
Private funding is not as problematic as it appears, according to Ilya Shapiro (director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute.
“If just one group is providing the money, it has the look of being tainted,” Shapiro said. “Part of election integrity is the perception.”
This article was adapted by a RealClearInvestigations articlePublished Jan. 12.
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