Peach Tree Times

Stymied by the Georgia General Assembly, a voter integrity group is working with the State Election Board to keep all private money out of the administration of elections.

Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, explained that loopholes were left in place in election reform legislation (SB 202) approved last year that banned local election officials from accepting the money.

“Counties can still accept the money,” Favorito told the Peach Tree Times. “The Secretary of State can, and the money can be given to election officials if it’s complimentary and goes for technical assistance.”

Garland Favorito | Twitter

Earlier this year, Favorito pressed the General Assembly for a total ban – and did beat back an attempt to reverse the partial ban – but the session ended in early April with no movement on the issue. The House and Senate don’t reconvene until January 2023.

The money became an hot button issue for supporters of election reform when research into Internal Revenue Service filings showed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, funneled $350 million through two nonprofits to state and local election officials leading up to the 2020 general election.

The watchdog group conducting the research, the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center, showed the bulk of the funds, so-called Zuckerbucks, went more to blue areas over red areas in what amounted to a get-out-the-vote campaign for the Democratic Party. Yet the money was purportedly donated to help ensure safe elections during the pandemic.

Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) and former Virginia Attorney General, said that a legislative proposal in Georgia that died with the end of session would have provided more transparency in the process, but also would have allowed unelected officials to distribute the funds arbitrarily.

“I’ve been in and around government to know that zero is the best policy when it comes to this money,” Cuccinelli told the Peach Tree Times.

ETI is leading a coalition of conservative grassroots organizations in the sending out of questionnaires and pledges to state legislative and secretary of state candidates around the country to assess their commitment to election reform. Banning Zuckerbucks is one of the pledges the candidates are being asked to commit to.

For his part, Zuckerberg announced in April that he was ending the grants to election officials. The announcement came days after the release of the film “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump” explored his influence over the 2020 elections. The film is a project of Citizens United Productions.