Tag: Center for Tech and Civic Life

Zuckerberg-Backed Group Promotes $6 Million Election Grant from Left-Wing Nonprofit

Daily Caller News Foundation

A left-leaning organization backed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is promoting a $6 million election grant program to “support local election officials” from an influential left-wing nonprofit, The Federalist reported Friday.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) allegedly told election officials to participate in the “A More Responsive Government 2024 Grant Program” associated with the Institute for Responsive Government (IRG), according to emails obtained by The Federalist. The CTCL funneled $350 million to states across the nation in 2020, with Zuckerberg donating $328 million to the organization, according to Influence Watch.

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Commentary: ‘ZuckBucks’ Heads to Rural America in 2024

Daily Caller News Foundation

Money always finds a way. In the years following the 2020 election, dozens of states managed to ban private funding of elections. But even though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly promised not to pour more of his money into your local election office, this year, the “Zuckbucks” team is recommitted to spreading cash wherever they legally can.

Recall that in late 2020, Zuckerberg directed his charitable arm to pass $350 million through an obscure nonprofit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) to fund large and small election offices around the nation. Some politically important counties received millions of dollars while others did not. As of today, 28 states have since banned the practice. Despite the bans, the CTCL’s work continues. In fact, the bans guide cash along new paths of least resistance.

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Commentary: ‘Zuck Bucks’ Need to Be Stopped Cold

Daily Caller News Foundation

It is less than 90 days to Election Day, and right on queue the group behind the “Zuck Bucks” campaign of 2020 is back with a new scheme. This time, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is doling out millions in grant dollars to rural election administrators in 19 states.

Election officers beware. The group is trying to turn the government offices that run elections into bastions of partisan progressive activism. Election officials striving for nonpartisanship should steer clear.

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Georgia Election Official Seeking New Term Voted on Cases Involving His Lobbyist Clients

Just the News
Edward Lindsey

Georgia State Election Board (SEB) member Edward Lindsey is up for reconfirmation before the state House amid new revelations that he has voted on cases involving counties for which he is a lobbyist.

Lindsey, who was appointed to the SEB position on Jan. 7, 2022, is a lobbyist for both Cobb County and DeKalb County, according to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. The two counties are among the top five most populous in Georgia, which has 159 counties.

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Commentary: The Left’s Ridiculous Disinformation on Tainted Zuck Bucks

Georgia Star News Staff
Zuck Bucks

Anyone who’s followed the Mark Zuckerberg “Zuck bucks” story since 2020 has witnessed some spectacular acrobatics from the left.

First, it was denial that a partisan billionaire was trying to privatize the election in swing states. Then, when Democrats unseated President Trump, NPR and others praised Zuck bucks for “saving” the election. When the 2022 midterms came, the cry was for more private funding to “rehabilitate” democracy. Now the media’s latest stop: gaslighting the public into believing any criticism of leftist “dark money” is just conservative propaganda, rather than one of the worst election innovations of our time.

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Two North Carolina Counties Withdraw from ‘Zuckerbucks’ Alliance as 2024 Election Cycle Begins

Just the News

Two North Carolina counties left a Zuckerbucks nonprofit — where private money is injected into public election administration — as the 2024 election cycle began, citing time commitment as the reason for leaving.

Brunswick and Forsyth counties in North Carolina have left the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), after joining it last year.

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2022 Election Disputes Continue to Wind Through U.S. Courts as 2024 Nears

Just the News

While former Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake continues with election-related lawsuits regarding irregularities in Maricopa County, there were also other issues during the 2022 midterm elections that occurred across the country.

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Commentary: Everyone Can Agree on Election Integrity

Georgia Star News Staff

At first glance, some Americans could mistakenly conclude that election integrity safeguards are deeply unpopular. After all, liberal politicians and the mainstream media regularly denounce commonsense measures like photo ID laws and routine voter roll cleanups.

No matter what they claim or how loudly they claim it, these voices do not speak for the majority of Americans. As recent polling conducted by Honest Elections Project Action shows beyond all doubt, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans embrace commonsense voting laws that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

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Georgia Lawmakers Sign Off on ‘Zuckerbucks’ Ban

The Center Square

Georgia lawmakers signed off on legislation banning counties from soliciting or accepting donations to help administer elections.

Senate Bill 222, a so-called “Zuckerbucks” ban, specifies that public funds must pay for election administration costs. It also prohibits government employees and elections officials from receiving gifts valued at more than $500 from third-party groups to conduct primaries or elections.

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States, Counties Clash over ‘Zuckerbucks’-Like New Sources of Private Election Funding

Just the News

As “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — make a comeback, states and municipalities are clashing over whether the funds should be accepted or banned.

While many states and counties across the country have either restricted or banned the use of private money to fund public elections offices, a nonprofit with progressive Democrat ties that served as the key link in the 2020 Zuckerbucks funding chain is still finding loopholes in some counties as states seek to tighten up their laws.

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Georgia State Senate Passes Bill to Close ‘Zuckbucks’ Loophole

Just the News

The Georgia Senate has passed a bill to prohibit local election offices from using private funding to conduct elections, after election officials reportedly used a loophole to accept the money.

The bill stipulates “costs and expenses related to conducting primaries, elections, runoffs, or other undertakings authorized or required by [state law] shall be paid from lawfully appropriated public funds.”

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Georgia Election Chief Blasts County for Taking $2M in Zuckerbucks, Suggests Legislative Remedy

Just the News

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) slammed DeKalb County for accepting $2 million in private money for election administration — or “Zuckerbucks” — in “violation” of state law while suggesting a legislative remedy to prevent counties from directly receiving such funds.

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Commentary: Big Philanthropy Advances as a Big Player in the Private Funding of Public Elections

RealClearWire

Echoing the private financing of public elections that critics saw as heavily favoring Democrats in 2020, some of America’s richest foundations are pouring money into a similar effort again, in the face of more organized conservative resistance.  

A nonprofit group called the Audacious Project, whose supporters include the Gates and MacArthur foundations and the Bridgespan Group, a consultant whose clients include Planned Parenthood, has committed $80 million to a progressive organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to provide grant funding to run local elections.   

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Big Tech-Aligned Group Wants to Go ‘Nationwide’ in Shaping Election Operations

Admin

A Big Tech-aligned group funded through liberal dark money is moving to expand “nationwide,” even though about half the states have banned using private money to run elections. The Center for Tech and Civic Life launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence in partnership with organizations funded by the liberal Arabella Advisors and Democracy Fund, as The Daily Signal previously reported. The tech center is the same group that distributed $350 million in election-administration grants in 2020 from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife.

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Zuckerbucks-Backed Group Back in Wisconsin

Georgia Star News Staff

The liberal voting activist group that dumped $350 million of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s money on local election offices during the 2020 presidential election is back again with another $80 million to give over the next five years.

And Wisconsin once again will be front and center in the Center for Tech and Civic Life’s “generosity.”

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Bossie Releases ‘Zuckerbucks’ Film, as Over 40k Shown to Have Bypassed Wisconsin Voter ID Rules in 2020

Georgia Star News Staff

With pro-Trump activist and political filmmaker David Bossie premiering a new documentary on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago about the influence of “Zuckerbucks” in swaying the 2020 election in battleground states like Wisconsin, an election integrity watchdog group has documented that more than 40,000 absentee ballots in that state were cast in 2020 without providing ID by voters self-identifying as “indefinitely confined.”

In “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” Bossie, president of conservative nonprofit Citizens United, explores how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg injected nearly $400 million into the 2020 presidential election through two left-leaning voter turnout nonprofits — the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR) — “with most of the funds funneled to government elections offices in critically important jurisdictions for Joe Biden — to finance get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at defeating” Trump, according press materials for the film.

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Election Watchdog: ‘Not Ready for 2024’ Elections, ‘Still Have Many of the Same Problems’ from 2020

Admin

Election integrity issues from the 2020 presidential election have yet to be resolved, “so we are not ready for 2024,” Phill Kline, Director of the Amistad Project, warned on Monday.

Kline was asked by “Just the News, Not Noise” TV show cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head if election integrity issues had been solved after the 2020 election. “No, we still have many of the same problems,” he replied, explaining that this is “because the legislatures have not taken the time to understand the problem.”

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Founder of Zuckerberg’s Election Group Took China-Funded Fellowship at Harvard Think Tank

Georgia Star News Staff

The founder of the controversial, Mark Zuckerberg-backed election group Center for Tech and Civic Life was a fellow at a Harvard University think tank which receives funding from Chinese Communist Party-linked firms.

The CTCL was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a 2015-16 Technology and Democracy Fellow at Kennedy School of Government’s Ash Center, which is partly funded by several Chinese Communist Party-affiliated enterprises, according to the National Pulse.

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Facebook-Linked Grants Backed Democrats in Pennsylvania in 2020

Georgia Star News Staff

A new report reveals that multiple private grants tied to the Big Tech giant Facebook overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates and counties in the state of Pennsylvania in 2020, as reported by the New York Post.

The report by the publication Broad + Liberty (BL) reveals that one such grant, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), spent more money on turning out registered voters in Democrat-majority counties than Republican-majority counties. In addition to the increased push for voter turnout, these counties were given a jumpstart on this grant and information on how to apply by state officials.

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Pennsylvania State Senators Legislating to Prevent Privatizing Election Administration

Bradley Vasoli
Kristin Phillips-Hill

Pennsylvania lawmakers plan to introduce a measure banning private organizations from funding election administration in the Keystone State.

The bill’s sponsors, state Sens. Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-Jacobus) have cited the role that the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) played in election operations in Philadelphia and other Democratic-leaning counties in 2020. CTCL has been funded significantly by Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

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Attorney General Garland Denies Knowledge of Claims that Zuckerberg ‘Bought’ 2020 Election

Peter D'Abrosca

During Wednesday’s hours-long grilling of Attorney General Merrick Garland by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which mainly focused on the events of January 6 and Garland’s directive to investigate parents who speak School Board meetings, one critical question went almost unnoticed. 

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) questioned Garland about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $400 million spending spree during the 2020 election. The money was allocated through Zuckerberg-funded non-profits the Center for Tech and Civic Life, described by Influence Watch as an “organization [that] pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration,” and the Center for Election Innovation and Research. 

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Commentary: Election Rules Have to Mean Something

RealClearWire

The rule of law must be respected for liberty to be protected.  Changing the rules to achieve a desired outcome undermines both, and when this is done in the administration of elections, democracy itself is imperiled.

Unfortunately, the left shows no compunction about wielding power for partisan advantage, especially when it comes to election administration. They’ve even gone so far as to create new rules to suit their purposes, regardless of whether they possess the authority to do so.

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