Americans overwhelmingly say they oppose allowing government offices that oversee elections to accept funding for their operations from partisan, private individuals and groups – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. It’s a problem exposed in the 2020 election on which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife funded an astonishing $419 million in grants to county and municipal voting offices across America for essentially just that to support Democratic voter turnout. “Local election administration” grants are what supporters called it, but “Zucker Bucks” is what it’s more commonly called.
Now, those efforts are being expanded by other, partisan funding sources, and the threat that they may succeed is particularly acute in Illinois.
Few Illinoisans probably know, but their state is home to the primary organization that dispensed Zucker Bucks in what was probably the nation’s biggest and most harshly criticized election schemes ever. In 2020 alone, the Chicago-based Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) made $332 million in grants to counties and municipalities across America for “local election administration,” according to its filing with the Internal Revenue Service, financed almost entirely through contributions by Zuckerberg.
But CTCL and Zuckerberg are hardly alone. Similar organizations are proliferating and Zuckerberg is being replaced by other funding sources that have now allied with CTCL for November’s elections. And their methods are evolving, perhaps in more pernicious ways, further threatening the election process in Illinois and across America.
Most ominously, we probably won’t know how intensely they target Illinois and succeed in undermining a fair election this November until after the fact.
CTCL’s initial methods were quite novel in 2020. On the surface, they appeared to be focused on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts (GOTV). GOTV efforts are routine for both parties in areas where they think they hold the majority.
But this was different. It was about the privatization of election management by partisans who controlled which voters would be targeted for turnout. It was unprecedented for either party in its scope. I can find no comparable effort by conservatives, nor had the left ever before attempted anything so audacious.
The organizations are subject to no accountability or fairness standard. The individuals behind them could be anybody. They could potentially be foreign nationals, as explained in an interview here of Scott Walter, president of Washington, D.C. based think tank Capital Research Center, though there is no indication that has occurred to date.
Critics widely assert that Zucker Bucks essentially amounted to the takeover by CLTC of what are supposed to be nonpartisan election offices. And it was heavily focused on Democratic areas, mostly in swing states, thereby distorting the vote by pulling up Democratic turnout. Democratic areas in Wisconsin were among the most intensely targeted, resulting in lawsuits and attempts at legal reforms there, which is described here by the Center for Excellence in Polling, another think tank that has researched the topic closely.
The criticisms are typified by one researcher who said it was about “financing the infiltration of election offices at the city and county level by left-wing activists and using those offices as a platform to implement preferred administrative practices, voting methods and data-sharing agreements, as well as to launch intensive outreach campaigns in areas heavy with Democratic voters.” In places like Georgia, where Biden won by 12,000 votes, and Arizona, where he won by 10,000, that researcher concluded, “the spending likely put Biden over the top.”
A RealClear Investigations column details the numbers and research on how intensely spending was concentrated on likely Democratic voters.
Zuckerberg has said he won’t be funding similar efforts this year, and CTCL’s 2020 work was in Illinois was comparatively small.
Does that mean Illinois has little to worry about?
No, to the contrary, the off-year nature of this election combined with new organizations engaged in similar and expanded methods put Illinois more at risk. And Illinois is making none of the reforms needed to address the issue, which at least half of other states have already made.
Before getting to that, a brief review of what CTCL and a similar organization did in Illinois in 2020 provides background.
Illinois in 2020:
Biden v. Trump was nearly all-consuming in 2020 and an Illinois win for Biden was nearly certain. That meant CTCL spent relatively little in Illinois and its efforts were not as intensely targeted as in swing states. Illinois was 15th from the bottom in the amount each state received on a per capita basis, according to the Capital Research Center.
CTCL, whose executive director and co-founder is Chicagoan Tiana Epps-Johnson, made about 55 grants to Illinois county and city government units handling elections totaling about $5.7 million, (though there are some discrepancies in CTCL’s reporting), according to Capital Research Center.
Most were small – under $50,000. But the big ones went to Chicago and its collar counties (other than McHenry County where no grant was made) – which have large proportions of Democratic voters. As expected, they voted heavily in favor of Joe Biden. In total they got about $4.0 million from CTCL. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners got by far the largest grant, about $2.3 million. Details for those and other locations are on CTCL’s Form 990.
Illinois also saw 2020 activity by another organization heavily criticized for activity similar to CTCL that was also heavily funded by Zuckerberg. That’s the Washington, D.C. based Center for Election Integrity and Research, CEIR.
Its founder, David Becker, has been described as a vicious partisan and leftist. As reported by Influence Watch, in 2005, when Becker was a trial lawyer at the U.S. Justice Department, a formal complaint was made against him after he contacted the city of Boston offering to help defeat a lawsuit opened against them by his employer, the DOJ, for voting infractions. Brad Scholzman, acting head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division at the time, stated, “It was the most unethical thing I’ve ever seen” and called Becker “a hard-core leftist” who “Couldn’t stand conservatives.” Hans von Spakovsky, who worked as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, agreed with Scholzman’s characterization of Becker. “In his role with the DOJ, he was supposed to be non-partisan, but his emails uncovered in the Boston investigation revealed nasty, disparaging remarks about Republicans. Very unethical and unprofessional.”
Becker’s CEIR is reported to have made grants in a similar fashion as CTCL totaling over $2.6 million in Illinois in 2020, though I have not found details thereon.
For This Year’s Election, New Organizations, a New Alliance and New Methods:
CTCL and CEIR have far from gone away, despite Zuckerberg’s indication that he will not be participating this year. In fact, CTCL in April announced a new alliance with similar organizations. It’s called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and it has already pledged $80 million for “local election administration.”
The alliance now has seven member organizations, which are a “bevy of leftist nonprofits, according to Capital Research Center. It was criticized, among other places, in a May column in The Hill, which says the alliance will “identify… local election departments” and provide “coaching,” with the goal of “improv[ing] upon practices and procedures.” It will focus on the whole of election infrastructure, including technology, while providing “custom support” to local officials.
“That’s even more concerning than what happened in 2020,” the column rightly says. “Training public officials to run elections is not the role of a private organization. It is the role of state chief election officers — normally the secretary of state or an election commission — or their designees, who are accountable to voters.”
Yet another group called Run for Something is targeting control of elections in a different manner. It says it will be spending another $80 million. As reported by The Daily Signal, “Run for Something is a political action committee founded by a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer. In the spring, Run for Something established its Clerk Work project with the goal of electing clerks, election supervisors, registrars, recorders, and other local officials charged with running elections.”
Perhaps most alarming, ERIC, which is the officially used voter-roll management system for 31 states, including Illinois, is now being reported to have politically compromising ties with CEIR. Details are in a new column in The Federalist, which says:
ERIC shares voter roll data — including records of unregistered voters — it receives from the states with CEIR, according to public information requests detailed in the report. CEIR then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach. As part of their agreement with ERIC, states are not allowed to disclose any data they send to nor receive from ERIC, however, ERIC is not under the same constraints and is able to work with CEIR.
Several member states have expressed concern about ERIC, according to The Federalist, but only Louisiana has withdrawn. “ERIC makes it difficult for states to leave, as it prohibits resignation 91 days before a federal general election,” according The Federalist.
What can we expect will be done about these issues in Illinois? Nothing:
At least 25 states have now enacted reforms banning or restricting Zucker Bucks and similar activities, and more are probably on the way.
They do not include Illinois. Democrats in Illinois hold supermajorities in both houses of the General Assembly and every statewide office.
Is the federal government addressing these issues?
Hardly. In fact, the Biden Administration appears to be sponsoring a similar effort, described here by the Center for Excellence in Polling.
On March 7, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order directing hundreds of federal agencies to submit a plan to “promote voter registration and voter participation,” and to support approved third-party organizations to provide voter registration services at federal agency offices scattered across the country.
“Who approves these third-party organizations and the criteria for approval is left to the imagination, wrote the center. “It’s now Biden Bucks,” as they put it.
What about the Illinois Board of Elections?
To my knowledge, they have no authority to enact any needed reforms.
I nevertheless contacted the board for comment on these matters. Public Information Officer Matt Dietrich at the board told me that “the Board of Elections only has enforcement authority for violations of the Campaign Finance Act, so GOTV activities don’t come under our purview unless they involve allegations of misuse of campaign funds,” and I think that’s right.
But the more important part of his response was a question he put to me: “Do you have any specifics on what the groups you mentioned have planned or are doing already in Illinois?
No, I have no idea what these groups will be doing in Illinois’ election this year. Nobody knows, except the groups themselves. That’s precisely the problem. Just as was the case for the 2020 election, only after they file their Form 990s and other reports will we have any indication about what they are spending and where. That will be next year at the earliest. It will then be too late.
Zucker Bucks in 2020 went mostly to states likely to swing the presidential race, which did not include Illinois, so the state saw comparatively little of that activity. But with no presidential election this year, the focus will be on Congressional, statewide and local elections, at least some of which will be competitive in Illinois.
That means Illinois may well see a major expansion of partisan attempts to take over control of the election process, including the new methods described herein.
It will be open season in Illinois for the unregulated, partisan groups seeking that control.