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Dear Friends —
They may be almost two years out, but preparations for 2024 elections are well underway … especially if you’re funding races.
Of course, we all know there are plenty of people putting big money behind each race. But one guy’s money and influence is particularly troubling. Mark Zuckerberg pledged $80 million in “Zuckbucks” for the 2024 election cycle.
What exactly are Zuckbucks?
Instead of funding political campaigns directly, in 2020 Mark Zuckerberg donated hundreds of millions of dollars to two organizations: The Center for Technology and Civic Life and The Center for Election Innovation and Research. His $419+ million went to fund programs like “vote navigators,” people who assisted “voters, potentially at their front doors, to answer questions, assist in ballot curing … and witness absentee ballot signatures.” They also funded a temp agency affiliated with Stacey Abrams that helped count votes in 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia.
In fact, many of the organizations’ efforts were focused on activities that tend to boost Democrats (and which conservatives are very skeptical of): promoting universal mail-in voting, extending deadlines for mail-in voters, increasing “ballot curing” opportunities, and adding unmonitored drop boxes.
Other Zuckbuck issues
Along with sneakily funding orgs that try to put their finger on the scale during voting, we’ve also got this tricky question. Should the guy in charge of monitoring (and sometimes censoring) political discussions on Facebook be allowed to both silence conservatives online and fund Dems?
It’s hard to convince people you can fairly police speech online when you’re donating to sway elections.
What’s next?
Zuckerberg has already announced a pledge to give $80 million in “grants” over the next five years to counties across the country. There are almost no restrictions on spending, and few details on how the money will be spent.
Several Republican governors have banned Zuckbucks in their states, but on the other side, a few Democrat governors have banned the banning of them. In June of 2021, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a GOP proposal and said non-governmental grants help local election officials to “conduct safe elections under extraordinary circumstances.”
It’s an old comparison, but imagine if the conservative Koch brothers had been giving a half-billion dollars to “help” local officials like this? We’d have been hearing about it nightly for the last two years, from the news media Senate hearings to late-night comedians.
All you and I can do for now is continue to spread and share the story to prevent a serious manipulation of our electoral process.
—Ken