Before voters approved a constitutional amendment to make their state the 28th in the nation to ban private funding of election administration, Wisconsin’s capital city, Madison, already had spent over$ 1 million in private grants.  ,
Madison, like areas in three different says that ban private money from paying for elections—Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri—is a part of the U. S. Alliance for Election Excellence. The nonprofit, which was founded by the left-leaning Center for Tech and Civic Life, distributed$ 350 million in election-administration grants in 2020, which were funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his partner.
Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, regional president of the Election Transparency Initiative, praised Wisconsin’s decision to outlaw personal money from paying for elections as a major step toward improving electoral morality but hardly a magic bullet.  ,
” It is like staying ahead of thieves”, Cuccinelli told The Daily Signal. ” We are dealing with vote and keeping up clean elections, but this is the real world, not the electric world.”
The other side may continue to try to wet the waters, and we will continue to do everything, he said. ” Some countries are boasting about now spending the money. Nice. This is about ensuring stability in primaries going ahead.
In the book” The Myth of Voter Suppression“, I detail the impact of the Zuckerberg grants in battleground states. About 92 % of the grant wealth went to Democratic-leaning districts in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, more than half of the” Zuckerbucks” went to Maricopa County.  ,
The Zuckerberg offers served as a state-sanctioned get-out-the-vote battle, according to a particular guidance appointed by the Wisconsin Legislature.  ,
The city of Madison got$ 1.5 million in private dollars before the ballot initiative, which wo n’t be affected by the voter- approved ban.  ,
According to Madison City Attorney Michael Haas, the city has used the$ 1.5 million grant it received from CTCL to obtain election equipment that may automate the process of mailing absentee ballots and sorting them after returning, as well as safety carts to carry voting technology.  ,
” There was also a grant to help the city pay for its membership in the]Alliance ] for Election Excellence”, Haas said in a written statement. I do no think the act is effective because that offer was made and the account was purchased prior to the legal article being passed.
” Plus, the act prohibits the use of money or technology from a give to carry votes”, the city attorney added. ” I think it is a stretch to say that learning and developing ideal practices, which is what]the empire ] does, is actually conducting an vote”.
Despite a 2021 Georgia law that forbids the use of personal funds to run elections, DeKalb County, Georgia, accepted a$ 2 million award from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence last year, according to a report from The Daily Signal.  ,
DeKalb County asserted that it could accept the money because the 2021 laws just forbade the election’s” no chief” to do so. So the state ‘s , general government accepted the money and therefore passed it to election officials.  ,
DeKalb County was accused of avoiding the restrictions by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and another Georgia Republicans. The Georgia Legislature closed the gap and made it illegal for any common official to accept donations made for elections in 2023.  ,
DeKalb County officials acknowledged a report from The Daily Signal, but they did n’t respond before the publication of this report.  ,
The Center for Tech and Civic Life was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps- Johnson, Donny Bridges, and Whitney May, who previously worked together at the New Organizing Institute, which The Washington Post referred to as” the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts of digital wizardry” . ,
For the Alliance for Election Excellence, CTCL partners with many nonprofits, including the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, that are funded by Arabella Advisors, a kept- aircraft dark money business.  ,
Coconino County, Arizona, is also a member of the alliance. But it’s not getting any grants, County Recorder Patty Hansen said.  ,
” We received a$ 614, 000 grant from the CTCL in 2020 before the Legislature passed the ban”, Hansen told The Daily Signal. ” We do n’t accept any money from the alliance. We accept services. The alliance aims to create standards and best practices that can be widely accepted.
Former solid red states like Arizona and Georgia that flipped blue in the 2020 election, both of them. In Coconino County, where the largest city is Flagstaff, and DeKalb County, where the largest city is Decatur, Joe Biden’s narrow victory over Donald Trump in each state was aided by large margins of victory.
Two Missouri counties, Boone and Scotland, are also members of the Alliance for Election Excellence and neither received grants, Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon said. When the county agreed to not receive private funds, she made it clear, Lennon said.  ,
” Boone County is a member of the Alliance for Election Excellence, however, we do have the prohibition in Missouri law for private funding and, as a result, our county has not received grant funding from the alliance”, Lennon told The Daily Signal in a written statement.  ,  ,
Missouri, which leans heavily Republican, is n’t a battleground state in elections.  ,
Boone County, which includes Columbia, the state’s fourth- largest city, also went heavily to Biden in 2020.  , Scotland County, with a population under 5, 000, went overwhelmingly to Trump.  ,
” Scotland County, Missouri, is our other Missouri member of the alliance and they also have not received private funding”, Lennon said in the written statement, adding:
Finding enough election judges, especially those who affiliate as Republicans, is a perennial issue for us, finding more effective ways to design forms and applications so that voters can understand them, and ways to improve our existing elections processes. The membership also gives us access to subject matter experts who are current or former local election officials.
The Daily Signal contacted The Center for Tech and Civic Life with questions about this report.  ,
Clark County, one of the larger jurisdictions in Nevada, received$ 3 million from the center’s Alliance for Election Excellence, which is now regarded as a battleground state in 2024 and does not have a ban on the use of private funds to hold elections.  ,
The other alliance jurisdictions have strong blue areas and do not prohibit private donations from funding local elections.  , They are Shasta and Contra Costa counties in California, Kane and Macoupin counties in Illinois, and the city of Greenwich, Connecticut.  ,
