WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The latest investigation into the funneling of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s millions through a nonprofit to local election officials shows that in addition to ensuring safe elections - the group’s stated mission - another agenda was afoot – swaying the presidential election for Democrat Joe Biden.
The most recent look by the Capital Research Center (CRC) into the donations of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a leftist group with claims of non-partisanship, focused on Nevada and Arizona election officials. CRC discovered the same dynamic in an earlier investigation into Pennsylvania was at work: concentrating Zuckerberg’s money (he donated $350 million to the group) in counties with strong Democratic majorities where a heavier turnout would favor Biden. Influencing the outcome of an election by a nonprofit is forbidden under IRS rules, and some states ban the use of any private money in the administration of elections, even if that money is free and clear of partisan ties.
In Arizona, Biden won just 5 of 15 counties, but the votes in those counties accounted for 85 percent of his state total. CTCL funded the elections in four of those counties. It skipped Santa Cruz, a tiny county bordering Mexico.
CTCL appears to have given Republican Donald Trump a fair shake as it funded 5 of the 10 counties that Trump won, but they accounted for just 11 percent of the votes he won statewide. Biden won the state by 0.3 percent.
“Barring ballot fraud, that is an absolutely stunning result,” wrote CRC’s Hayden Ludwig, “particularly given that the Biden campaign’s presence in Arizona was minimal, to be charitable, and during the campaign he first visited the state in early October.”
He added that the same level of success for a political action committee (PAC) would have been impressive “but CTCL isn’t a PAC. It’s a 501(c)(3) public charity barred from intervening in elections. Mark Zuckerberg was, in effect, able to tilt the outcome of the vote in Arizona to favor Biden using the wrong vehicle, while receiving a tax break in the process.”
In Nevada, the state’s most populous counties, Washoe and Clark Counties, accounted for 92.4 percent of Biden’s overall votes in the state. CTCL spent $4.59 per Biden voter in Clark County. That’s $1.06 for every man, woman, and child living there. Biden won the state by 2.4 percent.
CRC is digging into exactly how the CTCL money was used in Arizona and Nevada but it notes that a $10 million CTCL grant to Philadelphia stipulated that the city use the funds for printing and postage for mail-in ballots. In 2020, Nevada conducted an all-mail election.
CTCL’s grant to Philadelphia also required the scattering of “secure dropboxes” around the city for voters to drop ballots into.
“This matters because dropboxes sidestep basic voting integrity requirements, allowing anyone—without any identification—to drop any number of ballots into a private collection bin with no official oversight and no accountability after the fact,” Ludwig wrote. “If a fraudster wanted to flood Philadelphia with phony ballots, CTCL’s Zuck bucks enabled him to bypass USPS mailboxes."
CRC plans to investigate how Zuckerberg’s money influenced the election’s outcome in other states as well.