Zuckerberg Had HUGE Influence In Georgia Election

Written By BlabberBuzz | Sunday, 06 June 2021 05:40 PM
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Zuckerberg Had HUGE Influence In Georgia Election

The election consequences in one of the most pivotal states in November—and again in a January runoff—may have been vastly influenced by a total of $45 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan, according to a government watchdog that has followed the money used to finance election administration across the nation.

Zuckerberg and Chan provided $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which gave the grants to 48 states and Washington, D.C. for election administration in the lead up to November 2020. Of that, $31 million went to Georgia for the general election, where Joe Biden almost carried Georgia’s 16 electoral votes defeating Donald Trump by less than 12,000 votes. The center further provided $14.5 million to Georgia counties for the January runoff election where Democrats won two special elections, flipping the U.S. Senate majority to Democrats.

The Foundation for Government Accountability contends the grant money in Georgia and across the nation was heavily weighted toward Democratic-leaning counties. While billed as election safety grants throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, just a small portion in any of the states the foundation reviewed was used for personal protective equipment.

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The CTCL gave nearly four times more in the Zuckerberg-financed grants to blue counties in Georgia as it gave to red counties, according to the FGA summary.

For the 2020 election, the Center for Tech and Civic Life gave roughly $29 million in grants to Georgia counties that Biden won, with a rate of $7.13 per registered voter. By contrast, the center provided $2.3 million in grants—averaging $1.91 per registered voter—to counties that Trump gained. The counties receiving the most in the lead-up to the presidential election were Fulton, Cobb and Dekalb.

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"The Zuckerberg funding is an unprecedented example of using government employees and government resources to put your finger on the scale, to affect the election outcome," Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Foundation for Government Accountability, explained. "It would be like giving private money to police departments to have officers do more stop and frisk in certain neighborhoods compared to other neighborhoods. It would be like giving money to the tax department to do increased audits in certain zip codes or neighborhoods versus other neighborhoods."

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Roughly half of the counties that Biden carried got Zuckerberg money, while just 20 percent of counties Trump carried got any. The CTCL gave over $1 million to just six counties in the lead up to 2020—all of which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. While the share of the Democratic vote increased in most Georgia counties from 2016 to 2020 by roughly one percentage point, counties that didn’t get Zuckerberg-funded grants "barely budged at all," according to the FGA analysis.

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