Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with his wife Priscilla Chan, donated more than $400 million to certain nonprofit organizations in 2020 that were distributed as grants to various elections offices around the nation in 2020.
That won’t be happening again ahead of the 2022 elections, however, as Zuckerberg received intense backlash following the 2020 donations and accusations that his money was used predominately to help Democrats win the elections, The Washington Times reported.
Following a recent announcement that the 2020 donations were a one-time deal, a spokesman for Zuckerberg and Chan, Brian Baker, told The Times, “They are not donating for something like this, ever again.”
“They have no plans to repeat that donation”
The Associated Press reported Tuesday on the announcement that Zuckerberg and his wife wouldn’t be making similar donations to a nonprofit organization that is purportedly nonpartisan and simply aims to help local jurisdictions conduct elections.
“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”
The bulk of the 2020 donations, about $350 million, had gone to an organization called the Center for Technology and Civic Life, which further distributed those funds via grants to local offices, most of which were Democrat-run.
That organization has now rebranded itself as the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and has launched a new five-year, $80 million initiative to create a network that local elections officials can tap into for aid to improve election processes and technology.
Donations primarily benefited Democrat-run jurisdictions
According to The Times, research and studies have shown that the vast majority of the funds donated to CTCL, as well as nearly $70 million to another nonprofit known as the Center for Election Innovation and Research, ended up being distributed to predominately Democratic jurisdictions. Both of those groups were founded and primarily staffed by Democratic operatives.
Ostensibly earmarked to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, very little of the funds went toward that, with the vast majority instead being spent on things like “get-out-the-vote efforts and to encourage mail-in and early voting,” again, predominately in Democratic areas.
Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway, who wrote a book on how the 2020 election was “Rigged,” said of the announcement that “while it’s good news that Zuckerberg won’t meddle in this year’s elections, he’s not the only left-wing tech oligarch who can finance these left-wing groups.”
“The left-wing Center for Technology and Civic Life, run by Obama political veterans, has already admitted it plans to continue its takeover of government election offices in swing states using the same grant model it deployed with Zuckerberg funding in 2020,” Hemingway continued. “These grants enabled these left-wing activists to essentially run the entire Democrat Get-Out-The-Vote operation from inside the government. States that care about election integrity need to protect their systems from control by the world’s wealthiest and most powerful individuals.”
To that point, the AP, Fox News, and The Washington Times all noted that at least eight states run by Republicans have already passed laws or implemented policies banning private donations to election offices, and that number is likely to grow going forward.
