Peach Tree Times

Ken Cuccinelli, the National Chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, has expressed his approval of the efforts made by Senator Max Burns and the Georgia Senate's Ethics Committee in introducing and supporting S.B. 222. This significant bill aims to protect the integrity of electoral processes by preventing private, outside organizations from funding factions that may skew election results in their favor. 

As the Chairman of the Georgia Senate's Ethics Committee, Senator Burns played a crucial role in ensuring the committee's agreement and support for S.B. 222. Cuccinelli has called upon the full Georgia Senate to quickly pass this vital legislation, thereby reinforcing and upholding Georgia's existing laws that prohibit such external interference in the interests of transparency and democratic integrity.

Cuccinelli said, “Chairman Max Burns should be applauded for introducing this critical anti-corruption legislation and moving it expeditiously through his committee. We now urge the Senate’s full support and to waste no time slamming the door on Big Tech’s illegal incursion into Georgia. The reality is that the Alliance’s private ‘grants’ are a way to buy off local election offices in exchange for access to proprietary non-public data, records, and other information—such as poll books, voting software, equipment and more. Their goal is to manipulate the official voting apparatus and systematically push liberal voting policies into local election offices for the purpose of partisan voter turnout. This impacts not only the way an election is conducted, but also its outcome. If not curtailed, disenfranchised voters will continue to question the legitimacy and accuracy of our elections and doubt whether they were conducted with fairness and honesty. Every election law should be adhered to as written, and everyone should play by the same set of rules. That is the certainty voters deserve. As we’ve seen, counties, municipalities and townships around the country can and should decline these private funds by passing resolutions prohibiting their use.” 

In a recent report by the Honest Elections Project, it has been revealed that the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a left-leaning organization, joined forces with a group of like-minded companies and organizations to launch an $80 million initiative in April 2022. The initiative, dubbed the US Alliance for Election Excellence, aims to target local election offices and provide them with an array of support services, including financial grants, comprehensive training programs, valuable resources, and expert consulting. 

However, both the Honest Elections Project and the John Locke Foundation have raised concerns that the Alliance's true intent is to systematically exert influence over election administration in the targeted offices, promoting the implementation of progressive voting policies in the process.

As the 2020 election approached, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) received a jaw-dropping $250 million grant from none other than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The CTCL pledged to redistribute these funds to local election jurisdictions for better election administration. However, in a bid to curtail outside influence and funding in Georgia's elections, the Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 put forth several key provisions. 

This groundbreaking law ensures that local officials are barred from accepting non-government funds, grants, or gifts for election purposes. It delegates the responsibility of disbursing private donations for election administration to the State Board of Elections, which is now tasked with distributing the funds equitably across the state.

In a surprising revelation, the Election Transparency Initiative has uncovered a covert grant application submitted by Dekalb County election officials in 2023, despite localities being banned from accepting private funds. According to the investigative report, Board Chair Dele Lowman Smith allegedly orchestrated the secretive submission to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) by directing Deputy Finance Director Preston Stephens to apply for the grant through the US Alliance for Election Excellence. Remarkably, this hidden endeavor was kept under wraps from the rest of the board for a staggering nine-month period.

Though Lowman Smith played a key role in directing the application process, decaturish.com reports that she insisted election offices were not permitted to receive grants directly. Instead, she claimed that the county's finance department was the primary guiding force behind the application, pushing for greater transparency and accountability in the electoral process.

According to a recent article in Just the News, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has expressed concern over DeKalb County's acceptance of private funding, which he believes runs afoul of the Election Integrity Act of 2021, also known as S.B. 202. Raffensperger conveyed to Just the News that this legislation was designed to prevent outside organizations from providing financial support directly to counties to conduct elections. He emphasized that the proper procedure, as outlined in S.B. 202, is for such funds to first be sent to the Secretary of State's office, which would then allocate the money to the appropriate counties.

Fox News has recently revealed that the office of Secretary of State Raffensperger has officially confirmed the commencement of an active investigation. Raffensperger has also asked the legislature to act to close any loophole that may exist with new legislation: "It was the will of the General Assembly that if outside organizations wanted to help supply funding for counties, it would actually be channeled through the state election board so that it could then disburse the funds on an equitable basis," Raffensperger said. "It would be a legislative remedy. We are in session now, so it is something they can address pretty quickly."

The newly introduced ETI SB 222 bill aims to strengthen anti-corruption measures in the state, primarily by addressing the issue of private financing of local election offices. The legislation proposes stricter enforcement of the existing ban on private funding provided by ideologically driven groups, major corporations, influential technology companies, and even potential foreign contributors.