Conservatives Tell Congress ‘Zuckerbucks’ Threaten the Integrity of Elections

WASHINGTON — A conservative public policy advocate told a congressional panel Wednesday that charitable grants to fund local elections pose a risk of shifting votes toward liberal special interests.

“We have allowed the private takeover of government election offices by partisan oligarchs and their armies of activists who use those offices and their authorities to tilt the election toward favored candidates,” said Mollie Hemingway, editor of the conservative online political magazine The Federalist.

The hearing of the House Committee on Administration coincides with a pending bill to ban private funding of elections. It has won approval by the Administration Committee but awaits a vote in the full House.

Congress turned its attention to private funding after the Chicago, Illinois-based nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life offered more than $350 million to help local officials pay for the 2020 elections.

Most of the money came from charitable efforts of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, which resulted in the funds being called Zuckerbucks.

Zuckerberg said he was trying to help while COVID-19 caused local governments to struggle to convince disease-wary residents to vote at voting stations. Local officials also complained their budgets for the elections were strained by the pandemic.

The money the billionaire offered was supposed to be nonpartisan to pay for election equipment and training of polling place personnel.

Conservative policy advocates at the congressional hearing said the effect of the funding was to win more votes for Democrats, such as through get-out-the-vote campaigns funded with the donations. They said it also called into question the fairness of the U.S. election system.

“Allowing just one of these attacks to infect our electoral system would be a crisis,” Hemingway said. “Allowing all of them at the same time is an existential threat to our system of self-government.”

Since the 2020 election, 27 states have banned private funding of local elections. Zuckerberg pledged to never do it again while adding that he had no intention to alter normal voting trends.

Will Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said popular opinion polls show most voters oppose private funding of elections. 

“I think we’re on a slippery slope here” if it continues, he said.

The bill pending in Congress, called the American Confidence in Elections Act, H.R. 4563, would ban private funding of elections.

Other provisions of the 224-page bill would end the special federal tax treatment for nonprofit organizations like the Center for Tech and Civic Life and their donors who might influence election administration, encourage states to adopt voter ID requirements and block federal funds to states that allow noncitizens to vote.

It was introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., chairman of the House Administration Committee.

“In my home state of Wisconsin, Zuckerbucks have sowed distrust in our elections,” Steil said. 

He cited the example of a “mobile voting van” converted from a food truck that traveled around heavily Democratic Racine, Wisconsin, to collect early ballots from voters in 2022.

After some residents complained about what appeared to be a violation of Wisconsin election laws, a judge last month ruled the voting vans were illegal.

“Elections are partisan, but election administration should never be partisan,” Steil said.

Some Democrats say the ACE Act is an attempt by Republicans to disenfranchise low-income voters and to protect wealthy donors.

Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., hinted Republican outrage over private funding of elections represented misguided outrage that should instead be directed at defining the limits of what charitable organizations are allowed to do.

“I think the conversation has been much hotter than it should have been,” Morelle said.

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