Last week, the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life finally filed its 2020 federal tax return and the list of grant recipients is shocking.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated approximately $350 million to the formerly unknown liberal organization CTCL. The group then gave “grants” to local election offices, along with explicit instructions regarding how election procedures were to be changed. This greatly benefitted Democrat candidates.
Although hundreds of jurisdictions received tiny gifts of a few thousand dollars, which probably made no difference in their actions, a surprisingly large number of jurisdictions received multi-million dollar grants of these so-called “ZuckBucks.”
Having spent many hours reviewing CTCL’s tax information and speaking with researchers at the Capital Research Center and the Rodney Election Research Institute, I am now more convinced than ever that this unprecedented type of “election spending” by CTCL and Zuckerberg is a serious violation of the spirit of free and fair elections. I am unable to recall any comparable effort ever having been undertaken in the entire history of U.S. elections.
It is hard to imagine President Biden wanting to add any city or county to the list of CTCL grant recipients, or him needing to ask them to perform any activities that were not already on the list of conditions that election officials had to meet in order to fulfill the CTCL grant requirements.