A Facebook-funded organization may have actually swayed Arizona to then-candidate Joe Biden in the civic disaster known as the 2020 presidential election, according to a new report.
Thousands of underfunded and unprepared counties across the nation turned to financial support from nonprofit groups. One such group was the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTLC), funded heavily by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Now, a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) has found that the so-called “Zuckerbucks” from the organization may have helped swing crucial Arizona counties to Biden.
“CTCL’s election grants—or ‘Zuckerbucks’—were advertised as additional resources to help election jurisdictions ‘safely serve every voter’ amid the COVID-19 public health emergency. Indeed, the grants themselves are called ‘COVID-19 response grants,” the FGA reported.
The FGA calculated that nine Arizona jurisdictions received “more than $5 million” from CTCL, with $2,995,921 sent to Maricopa County alone. Maricopa County is the most populous county in Arizona, and helped secure Biden’s win in the state, according to the Associated Press.
Rather than funding voter safety measures, however, “the funds were largely requested for get-out-the-vote efforts, influenced voter turnout in favor of Democrats, and may have impacted the results of the election in some states—including in the critical swing state of Arizona,” the FGA reported. In fact, “only a fraction of the funding was requested for personal protective equipment (PPE),” while “[o]ther election jurisdictions spent absolutely nothing on PPE and COVID-19-related items whatsoever.”
These massive expenditures may have had a significant impact on the election. “On average, counties that received Zuckerbucks saw the Democratic presidential candidate’s share of the vote increase compared to the 2016 election,” the report concluded.
The CTCL’s “Key Funders and Partners” page reads like the who’s who of leftist organizations. The CTLC was funded by liberal Big Tech platforms Facebook and Google and multiple liberal nonprofits. Rock the Vote, for example, listed “voter ID laws” as a method of “voter suppression.” The Knight Foundation is a “left-leaning private foundation that sets a primary emphasis on funding media-related projects,” according to Influence Watch. Democracy Fund was founded by liberal eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and “contributes to center-left and left-wing media organizations,” according to Influence Watch. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has an entire program dedicated to climate change called “sustainable development” that suggested “[h]uman activity is causing global warming.”
The CTCL was also funded by Democracy Works. Democracy Works “is a member of Bridge Alliance, a left-leaning social welfare coalition that supports numerous left-of-center election reform policies and is partnered with the left-of-center PAC Unite America,” according to Influence Watch.
While Zuckerberg donated money to left-wing get-out-the-vote organizations, the platform itself ran rampant with censorship. During the 2020 election cycle, Facebook constantly added new rules for election posts, froze political ads, and censored hashtags like #sharpiegate and #stopthesteal. Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen bragged about the fact that the platform removed 180 million election posts in a Nov. 19 call with reporters.
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