Peach Tree Times

Former Virginia Attorney General and Republican Ken Cuccinelli, who currently heads a national voter integrity group, is urging Georgia lawmakers to strip language from House-approved legislation, House Bill 1464, that presents an opening for state and local election officials to accept private money to help underwrite the cost of administering elections.

The private money, so-called "Zuckerbucks," donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and is wife, Priscilla Chan, has become a focal point for election reform advocates who cite the money’s influence on the outcome of the 2020 general election where Joe Biden was elected president. Biden's national popular vote margin was more than 7 million.

“While well intended, HB 1464 fails to confront the corrupting influence of Big Tech oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg who manipulate the official voting apparatus and dilute the voice and votes of Georgians in order to affect turnout,” Cuccinelli said in a statement. “We urge the House and Senate to advance the underlying bill, but to ban private and foreign money from being funneled into local elections once and for all.”

Cuccinelli is national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative.

Cuccinelli praised other provisions in the Georgia bill, including one that gives the Georgia Bureau of Investigation power to investigate alleged election law violations. But one provision allows election officials to accept the private money once it’s been cleared by the Georgia State Election Board as giving "no partisan advantage,” and is disbursed by the board on an equitable basis.

Cuccinelli prefers a complete ban, similar to a provision in legislation recently approved with a bipartisan vote by the Virginia General Assembly – a bill that Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, is expected to sign into law.

“Although HB 1464 would impose a potentially more transparent and objective process by which such funds could be received by localities, it risks empowering unelected bureaucrats within the Georgia government to distribute such funds arbitrarily,” Cuccinelli said.

Last spring the Georgia General Assembly was one of the first states to ban the private funding of elections after new reports documented the influence of the money. The bulk of the money, research from the Capital Research Center (CRC) shows, was funneled through the non-profit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), to election officials in Democratic areas in a get-out-the-vote campaign disguised as an effort to provide safe elections during the pandemic.

Joe Biden voters received $5.06 per capita of the CTCL money, and Donald Trump voters received 98 cents per capita, according to CRC’s research.

The CRC also found that CTCL gave grants to 17 of the 31 counties Biden won in Georgia. Biden carried Georgia by nearly 11,000 votes, the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since 1992.

“Together, these 17 counties received $42.4 million, or over 94 percent of all CTCL funds in the Peach State,” the CRC report said. “CTCL gave grants to 26 of the 128 counties Trump won statewide. But these 26 counties only received $2.6 million from CTCL—less than 6% of all grants distributed across Georgia.”

The Senate Ethics Committee is expected to take up HB 1464 this week.