Houston Republic

After tens of millions of dollars in private, invitation-only grants were shelled out to election departments across the country and state – including Harris County – the nonprofit election integrity law firm Public Interest Legal Foundation, and several other election watchdogs, have put Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg under a magnifying glass.  

A foundation report states Dallas County was gifted the most cash in Texas totaling $15.13 million, and Harris County follows with $9.6 million funneled into the Harris County Elections Division's coffers from the Center for Tech and Civil Life. 

According to Ballotpedia, CTCL'S funding was boosted by Zuckerberg, who announced in September that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were providing $250 million to CTCL.

According to PILF, there was no grant application open to all Texan counties no matter their party majority or other demographics. County election administrators were instead invited to apply. Most counties were small in terms of population with strong party affiliations—and the foundation says that was on purpose, to deceptively level out the mega-cash doled out to gigantic blue counties like Harris and Dallas. 

"The optics were better in making the operation look fairer and in the public interest by padding the grantees with small counties whose political loyalties were never in doubt," the report said. 

The foundation affirms that although the intended use of the grants was to make voting safer during the COVID-19 pandemic such as drive-thru voting, mail sorting assets, polling places, PPE and voter education, CTCL was not transparent on why the pie was sliced the way that it was in terms of who got how much—with strong blue counties receiving more than $1 million and red counties barely half that—and how the money was spent. The grants that were extended to counties of interest rather than offered to all election administrations is further cause for concern, according to the nonprofit firm. 

The Public Interest Legal Foundation says the grants certainly had an impact on the election outcome, using Tarrant County, the last urban Republican county in the state, as an example. Tarrant, which received $1.6 million in CTCL grants, and saw its election budget balloon by 21%, flipped from red to blue in 2020.

The Texas Legislature was swift to respond to concern about this amount of private funding for what is traditionally a publicly funded process; House Bill 2283 and Senate Bill 7 introduced last month limit the amount of money that a private citizen, like Zuckerberg, can dole out to a local election agency. 

“Private parties cannot be allowed to pay for preferred modes of elections in Texas or anywhere else,” said PILF President and general counsel J. Christian Adams in a March 30 article from Texas Scorecard. 

In Washington, the question of American election integrity is roiling around between voters, advocacy groups and legislators. According to Prairie State Wire, Restoration Action paid $2 million in advertising campaigns across three states urging the public and lawmakers to shoot down the For the People Act of 2021 (Senate Bill 1). The Act would remove voter identification requirements at the polls and for mail-in ballots. Voters would also no longer need to prove their identity with a photo ID and would only sign an affidavit instead. 

Restoration Action President Doug Truax said in a press release that SB1 "strips away critical safeguards necessary to ensure our elections are free, fair and transparent."

"Americans expect their elections to have safeguards," the advertisement script reads according to Prairie State Wire. "Only then can we have confidence the results are fair and accurate. Incredibly, some in Congress want to strip away those critical safeguards. No more voter ID. Signature verification on absentee ballots – virtually eliminated. And effectively allowing non-citizens to vote. The list goes on. Every illegal vote cancels someone’s legitimate vote – like yours. Tell your Senators your vote matters. Tell them to vote no on Senate Bill 1."

PILF isn't the only organization eyeing Zuckerberg after he dumped millions into the election through a nonprofit. According to the Capital Research Center (CRC) in a report from Legal Newsline, the writing is on the wall when "Zuckerbucks" are traced across the country: in Arizona, CTCL funded four of the five counties that President Joe Biden secured in the election. Even though the Democrat only won a third of the state's counties, the masses of blue voters in those five counties accounted for 85% of the Arizona voting population. 

Meanwhile, in Nevada's two most-populous counties Washoe and Clark, CTCL spent $4.59 per Biden voter. Those two counties accounted for over 90% of the president's votes in the state. 

The CRC pointed out that the CTCL isn't a political action committee, it's a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that should be barred from intervening in elections. 

"One of the most insidious effects these grants can have is injecting structural bias into the local election administration process," PILF's report said. "This grossly distorts what used to be straightforward election administration statistics studied in the aftermath.

"In November 2020, Texas performed two kinds of elections. While the majority of counties [making up only 26% of the state population] stuck to established/publicly budgeted procedures, the rest took Silicon Valley money in return for preferred administrative practices."