Georgia Election Officials, a Billionaire, and the “Nonpartisan” Center for Tech & Civic Life
This year, left-leaning donors Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan gave $350 million to an allegedly “nonpartisan” nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which in turn re-granted the funds to thousands of governmental election officials around the country to “help” them conduct the 2020 election.
The Capital Research Center is beginning state-by-state investigations of these unusual grants in order to educate the public on the ways these grants may have influenced the election. This, our first report, will focus on Georgia, where the election results were unexpected and very close, and where two more runoff elections are still to be held, with the Center for Tech and Civic Life now offering additional funding to election officials for those contests.
AdvertisementEven before the 2020 election, the New York Times and the Associated Press ran articles on these grants. The stories expressed great sympathy for local election officials scrambling to conduct balloting under difficult circumstances, but even these two left-leaning media outlets noted how odd and suspicious the operation was. The New York Times’ respected reporter, Ken Vogel, observed,
The prospect of election administrators tapping large pools of private money has raised new legal and political questions. That is partly because it is unusual for elections to be subsidized by nongovernment funding at this level, but also because most of the cash is coming from nonprofit groups that have liberal ties, and the biggest source of the cash, Mr. Zuckerberg, has drawn fire from across the political spectrum.
Similarly, writing on September 16 for the Associated Press, Nicholas Riccardi reported, “The cash comes with a new set of questions about donor transparency, motivations and the influence of groups and figures that are not democratically accountable.” He also reported without objection that conservatives were concerned because of “the Democratic origins of CTCL and that its donations have predominantly been in areas where Democrats depend on votes.” Riccardi even quoted my skepticism: “I cannot believe people of such partisanship will put their partisanship aside while taking hundreds of millions of dollars and distributing it to election offices.”
For this present report, we will analyze election results and compare what is known about CTCL’s grants in Georgia. The picture is notably partisan, even though we have only incomplete data on where CTCL’s money went. As the AP’s Riccardi reported, “The CTCL declined to disclose its other donors” besides the Zuckerbergs, who made their donation public, or to “itemize all its contributions to local offices.”
The CTCL’s website lists only the counties in Georgia that received grants, but not the level of funding, though that would hardly be difficult to include. CTCL, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is legally obligated to report on its IRS filings when it grants or provides other assistance of $5,000 or more to “domestic organizations and domestic governments” (see Schedule I of IRS Form 990). It is notable that CTCL has not, in something as public and controversial as the 2020 election, made these grant numbers public. Were its operatives and massive funding from the opposite end of the spectrum, one doubts the cosmos would have enough electrons to power the outrage vented on NYTimes.com and CNN.com, much less to post the objections by left-wing critics of “dark money” like Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Major Data Points for CTCL Funding in the Georgia Election
CTCL did fund more counties won by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump than by Democratic candidate Joe Biden: 27 Trump counties vs. 17 Biden counties.
But that’s a function of how many more Georgia counties went for Trump. A better comparison: CTCL funded 21 percent of Trump counties vs. 55 percent of Biden counties. So a Biden county was over two-and-a-half times more likely to receive funding.
Nine out of ten of CTCL’s largest known grants in Georgia went to Biden counties.
Even more ominous, CTCL gave grants to nine of the ten counties with the greatest Democratic shifts in their 2020 voting. Those nine grantees averaged a 13.7 percent shift blue-ward, and two of those counties (Cobb and Gwinnett) were in the four counties that delivered Biden the most votes.
Of the four counties won by Biden that delivered him votes in six-figures, CTCL funded all four.
Of the 29 counties won by Biden that delivered him votes in five-figures, CTCL funded 19, or 66 percent. (No counties delivered either candidate more than six-figure vote totals.)
So Biden carried 33 counties that delivered him votes in five- and six-figures, and 70 percent received CTCL grants.
By contrast, 46 counties carried by Donald Trump delivered him votes in five-figures (no county supplied the president a six-figure vote). CTCL funded only nine such counties, or 20 percent.
So the most vote-rich counties for Biden were three-and-a-half times more likely to be funded than the most vote-rich counties for Trump. Nine counties were both top vote-producers for Trump and also received CTCL funds. Five of these counties were among the top ten most blue-shifting counties in the state.
This pattern of grant-making by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit may or may not be illegal, given the murky laws governing nonprofits. The IRS states:
Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. . . .
Certain activities or expenditures may not be prohibited depending on the facts and circumstances. . . . [A]ctivities intended to encourage people to participate in the electoral process, such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, would not be prohibited political campaign activity if conducted in a non-partisan manner.
On the other hand, voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention. Full Article By Scott Walter @ Capital Research Center
Updates & Flashbacks
November 30, 2020 - Facts Matter (Nov. 30): Zuckerberg’s $400 Million Election Bid - Mark Zuckerberg and his wife donated at least $400 million to a group that has now been accused of contributing to constitutional violations in key battleground states.
What did they do with his money? And what does this mean for our republic?
October 27, 2020 - Zuckerberg’s funding of election operations prompts litigation, concern from conservatives
October 16, 2020 - $6.3M for elections from Zuckerberg, Big Tech pour into Wisconsin despite conservative pushback
