Zuckerberg-Funded Group Comes Into Spotlight in Election-Related Court Cases
BY ZACHARY STIEBER Nov 28, 2020 Updated: Nov 29, 2020A group that received hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is accused in post-election lawsuits of contributing to constitutional violations in key battleground states.
The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a national nonprofit based in Illinois, provided funding to over 2,500 election offices across the country to run elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Funds were used to pay poll workers, put up ballot drop boxes, and acquire mail-in ballot equipment and supplies.
More than $6 million was doled out to officials in Fulton County, Georgia, and to five cities in Wisconsin, according to lawsuits filed this month. The funds were sent to facilitate violations of state law, the lawsuits allege.
The money was sent through agreements that had municipalities run elections in contravention to state law, according to the lawsuits, which were filed by the Thomas More Foundation’s Amistad Project. Accepting funding from a private group like the center is barred by state and federal law, the lawsuits allege.
“There is nothing in Wisconsin state law that allows cities and counties to take in millions of dollars sourced to an incredibly wealthy, interested, and partisan actor (i.e., Zuckerberg) in order to ‘assist’ those cities and counties in administering the vote,” the Wisconsin court filing states. Wisconsin election officials said on Friday that filing was full of “meritless legal arguments.”
In the Georgia filing, the Amistad Project says the unregulated private funds from the Center for Tech and Civic Life were used to pay “ballot harvesters,” deputize and pay political activists to manage ballots, and consolidate counting centers in the urban core “to facilitate the movement of hundreds of thousands of questionable ballots in secrecy without legally required bi-partisan observation.”
Provisional ballots are seen in a postal service tray at the Gwinnett County Board of Voter Registrations and Elections offices in Lawrenceville, Ga. on Nov. 7, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, committed $400 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life for the nonprofit to assist jurisdictions in running elections.
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