Election Transparency Initiative chairman and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Wednesday that local election officials in the state should immediately disclose how much Mark Zuckerberg-provided money they are using in the 2021 election.
Cuccinelli's comments came in response to an Old Dominion News report that Fairfax County had leftover funds provided by the Facebook founder from 2020, and had been granted permission by the tech magnate to use them in the 2021 election cycle.
“The reports of Mark Zuckerberg’s spending to get out the Democrat vote through Virginia election officials is disturbing," Cuccinelli said. "Some of this money is clearly still being spent in this current election. Every Virginia election official should immediately disclose how much Zuckerberg money they are spending, and on what they are spending it. This is too important to wait until after the election.”
Old Dominion News has pending Freedom of Information Act requests with all 38 Virginia counties and independent cities that received Zuckerberg money, asking for copies of their grant activity reports filed with Zuckerberg as well as an accounting of what they are spending in the 2021election cycle.
On Jan 28, Fairfax County-- Virginia’s largest-- asked the Zuckerberg-backed nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), if it could extend its grant agreement into 2021, according to a report filed by the county’s Director of Elections, Gary Scott.
The report shows that Scott’s office received $1,430,950 in so-called "Zuck Bucks" and spent $967,294 on "temporary staffing support," $162,615 on equipment, and $54,802 on "voting materials in languages other than English."
Scott’s report also showed that he had $246,239 on hand as of the end of January 2021.
Critics say government election offices shouldn't be allowed to take private funds to run their operations.
“Right or Left, private funding of elections is the fastest way to destroy their integrity,” Hayden Ludwig, Senior Investigative Researcher with the Capital Research Center, told Old Dominion News. “Making government election agencies dependent on private donors undermines public trust, exposes them to outside influence, and risks foreign interests meddling in our politics. It’s the worst of 19th century political machines, when a handful of ultra-wealthy donors could manipulate election outcomes to suit special interests.”
In 2020, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated more than $350 million to CTCL, whose stated mission is to help election officials keep elections "safe and honest" amidst COVID-19. But CTCL is run by former Democratic Party operatives and left-wing activists, who, documents show, demanded that local officials hire Democrat consultants and folllow certain election practices in exchange for cash grants.
In Philadelphia, CTCL paid election officials to help count the vote and, required the city to open no fewer than 800 new polling places, the Amistad Project reported.
“In doing so, CTCL, a private entity, is changing how an election is managed,” said Amistad Director Phil Kline in a statement.
In Wisconsin, the city of Green Bay “handed over the keys to the counting room to Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, a representative of the leftist National Vote at Home Institute (NVHI) and a long-time Democratic Party operative,” said Amistad special counsel Erick Kaardal. Spitzer-Rubenstein also had ties with CTCL.
In Virginia, research by Ludwig showed that CTCL granted a total of $3.983 million funding Democrat operatives to work in local election offices in the 2020 General Elections.
Joe Biden won the six counties that received CTCL money by a collective 557,321 votes, 33 percent more than Democrat margins in 2016 and more than double Barack Obama’s then-record 2012 margins, according to an analysis of Virginia Department of Elections data by Old Dominion News
“CTCL claims that its Zuckerberg-fueled spending spree helped make ‘2020 the most secure election in U.S. history,” Ludwig said. “But our data proves that this tax-exempt nonprofit weaponized America’s generous charitable sector to effectively privatize the 2020 election in many battleground states. The only way to ensure this never happens again is by banning Zuck Bucks across the board.”
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