In the fight to save our elections, Americans are winning. Conservatives in Congress successfully blocked the Left’s priority legislation in 2021, H.R. 1 and S. 1, which sought to put Washington bureaucrats in charge of our election systems. And state legislators and governors across the country have been enacting reforms to ensure it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Bold action to secure our elections is worthy of all Americans' praise, regardless of partisan background. The surprising part, moreover, is that battleground states are leading the way in an area that matters most: Zuck Bucks.
For those not familiar with Zuck Bucks, let’s rewind to the 2020 presidential election. Leading up to the election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg funneled $350 million into a nonprofit called the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL). CTCL then gave the money to selected election offices and boards of elections around the country through an undisclosed algorithm under the guise of helping election offices deal with new COVID-19 rules.
Upon inspection, the real purpose of the money was to swing the election for the Left while allowing Zuckerberg and CTCL’s donors to save hundreds of millions in taxes. Only 1 percent of the funding went to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), while millions went to get-out-the-vote efforts. The Capital Research Center analyzed where the money went, and they found the money disproportionately went to counties in swing states that vote heavily Democratic.
The disparity in funding wasn’t accidental — the foundation has deep ties to the Democratic Party. The three founders of CTCL previously worked together at the New Organizing Institute (NOI), an organization described by the Washington Post as “the left’s think tank for campaign know-how.” Cristina Sinclaire, the President of CTCL’s board of directors, is a partner at Clarity Campaign Labs, which describes itself as “a data and analytics firm that guides Democratic campaigns” and lists clients including the Democratic Party, the Biden campaign, the DCCC, and the DSCC.
So why is a group run by Democratic campaign consultants allowed to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars––courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg––to whichever government election offices they deemed worthy, with the stated goal of increasing turnout in certain areas, with no oversight? Americans are rightly alarmed to see big tech billionaires infiltrate the election system at such a large scale.
That’s why states across the nation have taken charge and have shielded their voters from this corrupting practice. The surprising part is which states are succeeding — and the ones that are not.
Some states that are purple, or that have narrow voting margins in the legislature, or even Democratic governors, have had the will and the good sense to pass protections against private election money. Last year, the governors of Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona (which has a one-seat margin in the state senate), and others signed into law legislation ditching Zuck Bucks. More recently, Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia — a state that voted for Biden by 10 points and has a Democratic Senate — signed into law S.B. 80, and other states like Utah, South Dakota and Mississippi joined with their own bills. In Kansas, the Democratic governor vetoed a bill, but the legislature had enough votes to override the veto.
Yet some deep-red states, many with complete Republican control, have not yet passed this commonsense policy to protect their elections. Conservative states like Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Wyoming have seen bills die in committee, while other states are now working on bills but failed to pass anything in 2021.
Leaders of these states may think that since they were not targeted by the CTCL in 2020, or since their state voted for Donald Trump, that there’s no need to further secure their elections. They are wrong to think this. No state should rest on their laurels — 2024 is rapidly coming up, and the Left isn’t resting. In fact, activist organizations are ramping up their efforts: CTCL last week unveiled a new $80 million initiative to continue meddling in our states’ elections.
Protecting election systems from the corrupting influence of outside money is one of the most effective ways legislators can strengthen election security and restore confidence among their constituents. Heritage Action’s two million conservative activists across the nation have been working hard to protect the integrity of our elections, and I know firsthand that it is their top priority. But they can’t do it without state legislators.
Whether funded by Mark Zuckerberg or other woke billionaires, Americans don’t want Silicon Valley or CTCL determining how their elections are run, no matter where they live. They especially don’t want Big Tech billionaires doling out hundreds of millions of dollars to influence government election offices. It’s time for more conservative states to catch up with the rest of the country and ditch Zuck Bucks once and for all.