Trump and the GOP weaponized Mark Zuckerberg's donations; what it means for the 2024 election

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the subject of a heated political battle over election funding in Wisconsin that ended with a win for Republicans Tuesday.

Voters in the Badger State passed a ballot initiative to ban the use of private funds for election administration ? a measure championed by former President Donald Trump and Republican House lawmakers including Reps. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin and Jim Jordan of Ohio.

The initiative stems from misinformation surrounding a nearly $420 million donation Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made to two nonpartisan nonprofits, the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation & Research, in 2020. Those funds were later disbursed to local and state officials.

But the donation ? which some Republicans have coined 'Zuckerbucks,' an antisemitic term according to some watchdogs ? became the center of conspiracy theories pushed by Trump and his allies who falsely claimed it benefited Democrats. It also ignited a nationwide movement to ban private election grants.

Twenty-seven states have passed laws or ballot initiatives that either prohibit or regulate private and philanthropic funding in elections. Wisconsinites also passed a measure Tuesday that would prohibit anyone, other than election officials, to help conduct elections in the state.

And Wisconsin’s latest move, experts warn, signals a broader problem for election offices as threats to election security and misinformation continue to rise.

“There's increasingly just not funding available for local officials to replace their outdated voting equipment, to make security investments in their voter registration technology… to open more polling places, whatever it may be,” said Derek Tisler, a counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections & Government Program. “This is really the trend that we're seeing here.”

Private grant bans leaves election workers in shambles

The Center for Tech and Civic life provided nearly 2,500 election departments across 49 states with grants in 2020. But in states where bans have been adopted, other than in Pennsylvania, there have been no efforts to provide election offices with an increased local budget or alternative sources of funding.

Coconino County, Arizona, had over $600,000 in funding from the group, which was used to hire more poll workers and temporary employees, run radio ads to expand voter outreach and purchase protective personnel equipment, according to Patty Hansen, a recorder there.

This year though, Hansen said she’ll be cutting back on the ads, among other things.

“It’s sad that we won't be able to do that as much this year,” said Hansen. “We're trying to do as much as we can, but counties don't have a lot of money.”

Federal funding has been low too, as Congress appropriated only $55 million in Help America Vote Act grants, which aims to improve voting infrastructure and election administration in states. The states have the discretionary authority to trickle down the grant money it receives to local election offices.

But local election officials said they see very little being appropriated to their communities, or no money at all.

Anne Arndt, a clerk in the village of Biron, Wisconsin, said she only received about $1,460 in federal dollars to help with the 2020 presidential election, which cost her $7,979 to administer. Her village budget was only $4,000.

But that year, she received $5,000 in Center for Tech and Civic Life grants, which she said helped her purchase a security camera and a hard drive to put on an absentee ballot drop box, printer cartridges, light bulbs and other items.

"To even consider cutting funding or not allowing funding for municipalities to administer some basic rights for people to vote... is incredibly wrong," said Arndt.

Zuckerburg conspiracy theory originated from ‘Big Lie’

The Zuckerberg conspiracy theory only adds to election workers’ troubles.

It is all “nonsense” built on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Zuckerberg had already been under scrutiny after Republican lawmakers accused him of censoring conservative Facebook pages.

After his 2020 donation, Republican voters in key battleground states and conservative groups filed lawsuits claiming that the funds overwhelmingly went to Democratic jurisdictions and that it influenced the outcome of the election. But those claims were dismissed in a bipartisan report by the Federal Election Commission and by numerous courts in Pennsylvania, Texas and other states.

An analysis conducted by Michael Toner, a Republican and former chairman of the FEC, at the request of Zuckerberg and Chan, found that more grants were given to jurisdictions who voted for Trump rather than Biden in 2020, according to an FEC report.

“None of the considerations about grant making and none of the criteria in the grant application or the decision making process had any partisan considerations,” said Tianna Epps-Johnson, the founder for the Center for Tech and Civic Life.

While some conservatives argued that election offices used the funds for voter outreach, there’s nothing partisan about that move, said Mayer. "Clerks do this all the time, and the voting modes changed so dramatically because of COVID-19 that election officials were right to try to inform voters," he said.

Even so, Trump continued to spread misinformation about the grants. He called Zuckerberg a “criminal” in an email to his supporters in 2021. He invited some of his top donors and allies to Mar-a-Lago in 2022 for a viewing of the film “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump.”

In February, House Republicans advanced a ban that would block private funding for election administration.

“Elections may be partisan, but election administration should never be partisan. Private funding can sow distrust and lead to illegal behavior,” Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisc., who supports the ban, told USA TODAY.

Steil said banning private funding in elections has been a bipartisan effort. Only five states with a divided government have passed such laws; 21 states had a Republican trifecta. Louisiana passed a similar act through a ballot measure, as did Wisconsin.

False claims on private grants taken new life in 2024

Tisler said he expects to see misinformation around private grants grow heading into the general election.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life launched an initiative in 2022 called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence that pledged to distribute $80 million over five years to election departments across the country to support election infrastructure.

In January of last year, DeKalb County, Georgia, was awarded $2 million in grants. The Federalist, a conservative website, claimed the funds were part of an operation by Democrats to privately take over election offices in Georgia ? an allegation that USA TODAY debunked. 

Macoupin County, Illinois, was chosen to receive $500,000 in grants. However, conservative commentator Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor, falsely claimed on Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, that the Center for Tech and Civic Life has taken control of the 2024 election.

“There will be every opportunity for the people who have spread these false narratives in the past to again take advantage of people's anxieties, take advantage of a lack of understanding of the election process, and try to create doubt about election integrity and to do so for political gain,” said Tisler.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Republicans are banning outside groups from funding election