The Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life dumped $3.7 million in grants to Circuit Clerks and Election Commissions in 31 Mississippi counties in 2020. The organization states its mission is to "increase civic participation by modernizing the engagement between local governments and the people they serve.
CTCL's 2020 Form 990 states CTCL spent $354 million of Zuckbucks on funding public elections last year to "modernize engagement." The grants generated controversy. The Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday:
More than a year later, we’re still getting information about the huge private money that underwrote official government voting efforts in 49 states. Much is still unknown, but lawmakers already know enough to ban this practice.
A nonprofit called the Center for Technology and Civic Life, or CTCL, funded by Mark Zuckerberg, says it gave $350 million to nearly 2,500 election departments in the course of the 2020 campaign. Last month it posted its 990 tax form for the period, with 199 pages listing grants to support the “safe administration” of voting amid Covid-19. Some conservatives see this largess of “Zuckerbucks” as a clever plot to help Democrats win.
CTCL “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for Biden, ” says an analysis by the Capital Research Center....
Yet even under the purest motives, private election funding is inappropriate and sows distrust....
This isn’t how elections should be run, especially in the current era of partisan mistrust. Some states, including Georgia, Arizona and Florida, have already moved to prohibit donations to election offices. But Democratic governors in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina have blocked bans or restrictions.... Editorial
Hinds County received the largest grant, $1.7 million, in Mississippi. The "free money" was little more than flypaper for the corrupt. WLBT reported:
A further review of expenses incurred under Johnson’s leadership shows that thousands of dollars in grant and election funds were also spent to purchase writing pens, food for poll workers, home projection systems, big-screen TVs, subwoofers (video) and other home appliances....
County documents show that $5,398 was spent to purchase two 85-inch Smart TVs, while $738 went to two home or office projectors, $35,900 went to buy 10,000 ink pens to give voters on Election Day and $62,000 was spent to provide breakfast and lunch for approximately 612 poll workers on Election Day.
Broken down, that $62,000 comes to $101 per person. As for the ink pens, the amount spent on the Election Day giveaway is about $12,000 more than the county’s per capita income of $23,734.
Meanwhile, the firm brought on to provide those meals, Innovative Concepts 50, was formed only two days before the commission issued a requisition for the Election Day food... article
However, Desoto County puts its grant to much better use. The editorial reported:
DeSoto County, Miss., population 185,000, went 61% for President Trump, and it received $347,752. The county installed plastic shields, bought more voting machines to prevent lines, and hired workers to sanitize equipment. “This money was a hu ge help,” a spokeswoman says, since “none of these items were budgeted.”
Kingfish note: The legislature should ban such grants. No private money whatosever should win up in public elections. Period. There is a reason there are tighter restrictions on campaign finance for judicial elections. The same reasons should apply to such grants.
19 comments:
I voted for the Facebook-ChiCom-approved candidate and my social credit score went up! Hail Fauci!
I received $8,042 of this money for my cleaning business. All I had to do was purchase a leaf blower from Home Depot and blow off the sidewalks at two polling places. My sister helped me get this contract since she belongs to one of the churches used as a polling place and her husband lined the parking lot at another. This money help a great deal during the covid.
Reminder that Zuck has visited every state in the US on a tour to see America. His time in MS should be somewhere in his FB history. I can only assume that he made decisions based on the impressions and observations but still confined to his political bias.
And look what they got! Are you happy Zuckerberg? Try doubling down next time.
They got fleeced on hinds. The fix has been in for years there
3.7 that they know of. Trying to turn us blue. Explains all those 4 x4 f250s parked in front half the circuit clerks in the sip.
$3.59 pens? All my pills have ever used are cheap BIC pens. They got some nice bulk pens for that much!
Zuckerberg is cut out of the same mold as George Soros. Low life!
Wait a sec…wasn’t one of the allegations in the Russian collusion hoax that thousand (not millions) of dollars of misleading Facebook ads were purchased in an effort to tamper with our elections? Yet the Zuck can openly pour millions into one state in an effort to influence its elections…and no one bats an eye.
You got money you can contribute to your cause too, haters going to hate !
@ 10:40 I don't bat an eye because it is his, or their, money. It's none of my business. He made it, it's his, and he should be able to spend it.
He did not make a nickel of it off of me. As a personal matter, I loathe the little twerp, and all he stands for. Likewise Joe Biden, Joe Stalin, Joe Sixpack, Hilary Clinton, and Donald Trump.
Of course do-gooder Yankees want to "civilize" the Magnolia State. It's been going on since before the Civil War. The bright spot is that they haven't made much progress. The bad part is -- let's face it -- on paper, at least, we seem a pretty backward state.
The business of finding Chinese Communist plots, and poor pitiful Dr. Fauci, and other lamebrain conspiracies behind, or supporting, political initiatives is just, well, not real sharp. Helps nobody except them, because it underscores the entrenched stupidity of many, so-called "conservatives."
I don't know 9:44, "Zuckerberg is cut out of the same mold as George Soros. Low life!"
Not exactly. Soros barely survived being Jewish in Hungary during WWII, essentially by posing as a Christian. In 1947 he emigrated to England, penniless, where he once accepted 40 pounds Sterling from a Quaker charity while he pursued two degrees from the London School of Economics. He worked at menial jobs through college. In 1956 he moved to New York, worked as a arbitrage trader, and ended up a billionaire.
Zuckerberg came from a middle class Jewish family in Westchester County. His dad was a dentist and he had a Star Wars theme bar mitzvah. He went to Phillips Exeter and Harvard -- where he purloined the Facebook concept from the old paper undergrad "slambook" model and became a media mogul.
I have no use for these fellows' political, religious, or other views, I am sure (I do not know what they think). Call them my political enemies. I do not think they are "low life," nor cut "from the same mold." One started behind the 8-ball, the other was a Harvard boy. I do not depersonalize the opposition. Mainly because it is stupid to do so.
If one goes out and makes a billion dollars, in my opinion, one should be able to spend or give it away however one wishes. If I had a billion bucks, I'd fund a Nathan Bedford Forrest theme park. One of the "attractions" could be the Fort Pillow shooting gallery where the targets would have blue uniforms and waive white flags.
There is a video of Zuckerberg throwing a spear with shooting style earmuffs on. He may be book smart but little to no walking around sense. We would have been a lot better off if the Wilklevoss twins would have ended up with Facebook.
@5:19am - Bravo sir, bravo.
Why are people okay with one person putting his thumb on the scale of our elections? Zuckerberg's point of view does not matter more than ours. He should get one vote like the rest of us; instead, he used almost $500 million to exert influence on the Presidential elections. Do you really believe his "generosity" was pure in nature? If Trump spent $500 million to influence the November 2022 elections, would you be okay with it?
Yawn.
I would love to hear your views on Citizens United if you distrust private funding with relation to elections.
Do any of us really believe Ol Zuck even knew this chump change was going to Mississippi ? Lol, now he may be a bit upset one of his money minions is using his millions to fund these elected folks across the country with REALLY NICE rides cause woke. Dude has to go to congress every 2 weeks to splain things.
We report the News we make the news we are the news. Nothing could go wrong could it?
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