Scotland County, Missouri, has exited a left-wing dark-money business that aims to control local election leadership, The Federalist has learned.
The region did not maintain its enrollment with the United States, according to Scotland County Clerk Batina Dodge. S. Electoral Excellence Alliance for 2024. As The Federalist recently reported, the Alliance is an$ 80 million venture launched in 2022 by left-wing nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life ( CTCL ) to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration ” and advance Democrat-backed voting policies in local election offices.
According to Ballotpedia, Scotland County was one of several areas named as part of the Alliance’s 2023 group. Importantly, neither Boone County nor Scotland County, another area of Missouri that is a member of the Alliance, were included in the coalition’s November 2022 announcement of participating regions.
During the 2020 election, CTCL and the Center for Election Innovation and Research cooperatively received hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. These” Zuckbucks” were pour into local election offices in battleground states all over the country to change how votes were conducted, such as by enforcing unsupervised election practices like mail-in voting and using ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, the provides were heavily skewed towards Democrat-majority regions, effectively making it a huge Democrat get-out-the-vote activity.
Leading up to the 2020 battle, CTCL distributed about$ 6. 8 million “Zuckbucks ” to local election offices in Missouri, according to figures from the Capital Research Center. This prompted position Republicans to pass HB 1878, which stipulates that “neither the state of Missouri nor any political division thereof that handles votes shall receive or waste secret cash, excluding in-kind gifts, for preparing, administering, or conducting an vote, including registering citizens. ”
Dodge claimed that Scotland County’s decision to allow its account with the Alliance disappear was the result of her resignation as secretary at the end of the month.
“After months of consideration, I have resigned my position as Scotland County Clerk effective April 30, 2024, to accept another job offer outside of elections, ” she said. The County did not maintain its account with the Alliance as a result because I did not wish my son to agree to play a role in something to which he or she had no say in the matter. ”
Dodge claimed that no one has yet named her leader.
Despite its return from the alliance, Scotland County, as of this article’s release, has not been removed from the list of participating agencies on the Alliance’s site. The Federalist contacted CTCL for comment on why Scotland County is also listed as a participating business, but the company did not respond.
However, Boone County is still an effective Alliance member. Clerk Brianna Lennon told The Federalist that Boone County is “a member of the Alliance for Election Excellence ” and claimed the locality “does not receive grant funding from the Alliance, ” citing Missouri’s “Zuckbucks ” prohibition.
Finding enough vote judges, especially those who online as Republicans, and better ways to design forms and applications so that voters may know them are a perennial issue for us, Lennon said. As a result, we have access to subject matter experts who are current or former local election officials on operational issues like surveys contractor selection.
A 2023 report The Alliance has sought to provide election offices with “scholarships ” to cover membership costs, which can then be “converted into ‘credits ’ that member offices can use to use to pay services from CTCL and other Alliance partners, according to a report released by the Honest Elections Project ( HEP ) and John Locke Foundation. Jason Snead, the executive producer of HEP, explained in a . past interview with The Federalist that CTCL “pivoted ” to “a fee-based membership model ” as a way of skirting state restrictions on private funding of election offices.
These fees are essentially waived for states that are permitted to obtain grants. The Alliance can also affect states where legislators have tried to stop it because they can also buy their way in for a comparatively small sum, Snead explained.
Scotland County’s exit from the Alliance comes a fortnight after The Federalist revealed that Weber County, Utah, had exited the partnership. The Federalist even recently discovered that Cache County, Utah, and Brunswick and Forsyth Counties, North Carolina, withdrew from the Alliance in recent months.
Shawn Fleetwood is a student of the University of Mary Washington and a staff writer for The Federalist. He previously served as a condition content writer for Agreement of States Action and his work has been featured in various stores, including RealClearPolitics, RealClear Health, and Conservative Review. Following him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
