EP. 41 — ZUCKERBUCKS

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Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp, and this is “Swamp Stories,” presented by Issue One. 

Weston Wamp: It was after chaotic scenes of long lines at polling locations hit national television during the primary season in 2020, that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan made an announcement that their foundation would make a large donation to bolster local election offices during the pandemic.

This came amid Congress allocating $400 million for election assistance, a sizable amount by historic standards, but far short of what experts like those at the Brennan Center and many state and local election officials said were needed to safely pull off an election in a pandemic.

The infusion of private philanthropy to aid the execution of an election has been scrutinized by both Republicans and Democrats. But the real story is rather boring and uncontroversial. The needs were real, every legitimate grant request was approved, and Zuckerberg’s philanthropic investment in American elections benefitted small rural communities and large urban cities in red, blue, and purple states alike.

This is Episode 41: Zuckerbucks

Tiana Epps-Johnson: The work that we did in 2020 was so informed by the early primary season, when we first saw election departments try to figure out how to keep voters safe and keep the process work, when the pandemic was so new to us. One of the things that I've never been able to shake is the Milwaukee primary in April of 2020. And what that looked like was 180 polling places being consolidated to just five. And still voters being committed to showing up. And so we saw lines that wrapped around city blocks of Milwaukee's voters, waiting for hours, sometimes upwards of four hours to cast a ballot. The weather was brutal that day. Folks stood in a hail storm at times to be able to cast those ballots, but they still did it.

Weston Wamp: Tiana Epps-Johnson is the CEO of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, one of two nonprofits that received most of the money Zuckerberg and Chan committed to election offices.

Tiana Epps-Johnson: If you remember, I think some folks forget, but it took over two weeks for Milwaukee to be able to provide results to the public.

And as we moved through the primary season, we continued to see things like that. In Georgia, we saw jurisdictions that were struggling to even be able to open polling places to start the election. And so there were national stories about how the pandemic was really bringing the voting process to its knees. It was a really dire set of circumstances. And so it informed our urgency around the work. And I think that it really elevated to the American public how important these election officials are and how important it is to support their work.

Weston Wamp: In the end, Chan-Zuckerberg’s election-focused philanthropy totaled a bit over $400 million, most of which was facilitated by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a small nonpartisan nonprofit. 

Tiana Epps-Johnson: It was an open call to every single election department in the country. Everyone who applied that was an election department that was verified as a legitimate election department, received grant funding. And that meant that we were able to fund election departments that serve 600 voters and election departments that serve over 6 million voters. I think one of the things that I'm most proud of is that when we look at the 2,500 or so grantees that we have, 70% of those were the smallest jurisdictions in the country. Jurisdictions that served 25,000 or fewer voters. And so it really showed that we were able to make sure that, regardless of geography, regardless of type of jurisdiction, that folks knew about funds being available. And if they needed them, that we were able to connect them with it.

Weston Wamp: In a historic grantmaking spree, CTCL paid out grants in the summer and early fall of 2020 to election jurisdictions large and small across America using an expedited grant process that focused on two main objectives. 

Tiana Epps-Johnson: We made an application that took no longer than 30 minutes for any election department to actually apply. Because they were under such significant stress just doing their work that we wanted to make it super easy for them to apply. We also, on our end, when we were reviewing applicants, we were doing two main things. Making sure that anyone that applied was in a legitimate election department. And then once we were able to verify that, getting money to them as fast as possible so that they could put it to work for their voters.

Weston Wamp: The funds, which many on the right now call “Zuckerbucks,” were used for all types of purposes: purchasing PPE, hiring additional staff, facilitating high volume vote by mail, and promoting voting. They also weren’t the only cases of private philanthropy in the 2020 election. Ultimately, others in the private sector also stepped in, including the Schwarzenegger Institute at the University of Southern California, and several major sports teams made in-kind donations to open up their stadiums.

But as is the case with even the most mundane aspects of the 2020 election, Tiana and the team at CTCL have been the target of conspiracy theories that it was Zuckerberg’s grand strategy to tilt the election to Joe Biden by concentrating his giving on states and locales favorable to Biden. Newt Gingrich and close allies of former President Trump have used the unconventional circumstances surrounding the Zuckerberg election funding as proof the election was “rigged.” 

But of course, two things can be true. 1) Republicans and Democrats agree that, in a perfect world where the government acts responsibly, elections should not be privately funded, and 2) the grants funded by Zuckerberg were not intended to favor Biden and analysis shows the jurisdictions receiving funds did not have increased turnout compared to jurisdictions that did not receive funding.

It’s important to note that, in the United States, elections are run at the local level in roughly 10,000 different jurisdictions. It’s also important to note that these local jurisdictions have to primarily pay for these elections themselves — even though they’re putting on state and federal elections as well. 

For the most part, Republican election officials Issue One spoke to recognize the critical need for, and in many cases accepted, the private funding. Many also acknowledged the potential for bad optics and spoke about the backlash caused by government inaction. 

Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller, who formerly served in the Missouri House of Representatives including as Speaker Pro Tem and acting Speaker of the House, explained the rare dilemma faced by election officials:

Shane Schoeller: They believe that, that money is being used for nefarious purposes, whether it's true or not, the perception is there. That to me was a more compelling reason to tell our friends of state legislature, "This is why you need to step up and fund elections so that we don't have to", because I don't want to accept private funding, right? That's not my ideal. I think that's the least palatable way to fund elections is through private funding. But in 2020 we had to make sure we could conduct an election fairly and safely and the best way to do that was have funding be able to do that. So that's why I was fine with that. Encourage other people to do the same. And certainly if I was in the same situation again, during that time period — knowing what I know now — I would still encourage people to do that because I think in that setting, there was no other options available except to have funding like that, to make sure that we could conduct the election well.

Weston Wamp: Here’s Weld County, Colorado Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes, a Republican: 

Carly Koppes: I did not go after any of those funds just due to the fact I knew that other counties needed those funds. I just am not in a position of needing those funds. I am thankful that they were available for some of my other election officials across the nation, just due to the funding gap. I am thankful for that. However, if people want to cripe and complain about private funding, then they also need to understand that we need to be funding appropriately through government channels.

Again, I'm very grateful for those organizations that helped out my fellow American recorders and election officials in that situation in 2020, especially just with the gravity of some of the state shifts that they had to do.  But I definitely would not like to see that in the future because I would rather make sure that the government is funding this appropriately.

Weston Wamp: Bill Gates, the chairman of the board of Supervisors of Maricopa County, Arizona — a county that has been the target of disinformation attacks — had this to say about the move by some states to totally ban private funding. 

Bill Gates: We did accept funding from the Zuckerbucks that you hear about. We did accept some of that funding. We actually returned a fair amount of it, but we did use it in particular for some of the pivoting that we had to do due to COVID-19.

Bill Gates: In the 2021 session of the Arizona legislature, they voted to ban private funding for elections, and the governor signed that legislation. So now it's a moot point, we can’t accept it. That's fine. This is what we try to explain to people. We don't create the election laws, it's a state legislature. So they tell us how to run these elections, and we follow the law. no private funding now? Okay, fine. We certainly hope though that they will fund us sufficiently then to make up for the loss in funding. 

Weston Wamp: Sam Oliker-Friedland is advocate for accessible elections and former Chief Counsel for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, which partnered with CTCL on the Election Infrastructure Initiative following the 2020 grant program to get more federal funding to local election departments. He is now the Executive Director of the Institute for Responsive Government. 

He points out that legislatures have not, in fact, worked to close the funding gap at the same time as they’ve banned private funding. 

Sam Oliker-Friedland: What you've seen is legislators targeting the grant program without pairing that targeting of the grant program with robust funding of the election officials in their state who desperately need funds to purchase new voting machines, to upgrade their voter registration database security, and to make sure that they have enough availability for the voters in their state to vote. 

There's a study by the Election Infrastructure Initiative that found about $54 billion in election infrastructure funding needs over the next 10 years, and not a cent of that was covered by the legislatures that have spent the last few sessions attacking the grant program.

that's really striking to me because it turns out that, when you look at it that way, it's not actually about making sure that election officials have what they need from the public officials that are actually responsible for providing that.

Weston Wamp: And as for the half-baked conspiracy theories alleging Zuckerberg was attempting to tilt the entire presidential election? Sam points out that both Trump-appointed judges and conservative Supreme Court justices rejected this outright.

Sam Oliker-Friedland: These conspiracy theories are not new. They've actually already been tested in the courtrooms of some of the most conservative federal judges across the country, not only before the election, during certification, but long after the election took place. And every single one of those, again, rather conservative federal judges found exactly what Tiana said to be true, that the funding was available to every jurisdiction in the country. That it was being used to make these elections safer for both poll workers, election officials, and voters. And that none of the conspiracy actually had any merit to it whatsoever. This actually went all the way up to the Supreme Court in an emergency posture where, in two cases, one justice basically gets to decide whether to move forward with a case. And Justices Alito and Kavanaugh rejected these claims outright. So these conspiracy theories have been on the radar for a while now, have been tested and have been found to be wanting.

Weston Wamp: Neal Kelley, former Registrar of Voters for Orange County, California and a Republican, had this to say: 

Neal Kelley: God, that was so overblown. There was so much in the contract on the back end that put an air gap between Zuckerberg and his foundation and the money that was used at the county level for elections. I never, never had any pressure, any issue with that. It was politics and it was overblown, and it was nonsense. My view is that, and that's part of the community pitching in. I think that's important.

Weston Wamp: For another perspective on just how outrageous these claims are, let’s look at Wisconsin, where the five largest cities applied together for grants.

In the city of Milwaukee, Trump got a higher percentage of the vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Not exactly overwhelming evidence that Zuckerbucks received by Milwaukee helped Biden.

But the clearest way to understand why Trump lost and to disprove virtually every conspiracy theory alleging fraud is to examine Trump’s performance compared to Republican members of Congress.

You see, if Zuckerberg had successfully driven more Democrats to the polls, these voters would have also hurt the performance of Republican congressmen like Mike Gallagher, who represents Green Bay, Wisconsin and surrounding areas.

But the opposite happened in 2020. Gallagher and congressional Republicans outperformed then-President Trump by significant margins all across the country. In Brown County, where Zuckerbucks were used by election officials, Gallagher received eight percent more of the vote than Trump and 11,000 more votes.

This fact is simply incompatible with a theory that Democrats were driven to the polls to rig the election against Trump. The unsurprising reality to Republicans like me is that four years of former President Trump’s polarizing behavior had simply turned off many Republican and right-leaning voters. They stuck with their Republican congressman, but chose not to vote for Trump. 

The bottom line is that under intense pressure, small nonprofits rose to the occasion and they helped ensure that the 2020 presidential election was conducted smoothly and safely — while also demonstrating the need for Congress to provide more robust investments in America’s election infrastructure.

Tiana Epps-Johnson: We have always felt at the Center for Technology and Civic Life that what we really need is predictable, robust public funding for election departments so that they can serve American voters in the way that we deserve. We deserve a process that's trustworthy. We deserve a process that's smooth. And we deserve a process that works for every eligible voter. And so when we are thinking about what we did in 2020, that was really helping ends meet in a national crisis. Because election departments were struggling to just get the machinery of democracy to work.

Tiana Epps-Johnson: And when we think about what is really needed, we have to have our public officials at the federal, state, and local level step up and actually properly fund our elections. Right now, we spend as much on our election infrastructure as parking facilities. But election infrastructure is one of our critical infrastructure sub-sectors. That's as important as our power grid. But we are not spending anywhere near the level of investment that we need to actually keep those systems secure in the long term.

Weston Wamp: On the next episode of “Swamp Stories,” we’re going to take a look at the 2000 Mules documentary and take it apart piece by piece.

Weston Wamp: Thanks for listening to “Swamp Stories” presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better rate and review it on Apple Podcasts to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at SwampStories.org. I'm your host, Weston Wamp. A special thank you to Executive Producer Dokhi Fassihian, Senior Producer Evan Ottenfield, Producer Sydney Richards, and Editor Parker Tant from ParkerPodcasting.com. “Swamp Stories” is recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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