Republican-Led House Must Ban Private Funding Of Elections Or Force Democrats To Defend It On The Record
After it was reported that the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence will give out $500,000 grants to two beneficiaries (and $1.5 million to another) leading up to the 2024 election cycle, Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana is calling for a ban on the private funding of elections.
The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a group that, during the 2020 presidential election, helped funnel $328 million “Zuckbucks” from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to mostly blue counties of swing states to mobilize potential Democrat voters and help swing the race in Joe Biden’s favor. While CTCL said the money was also distributed to red counties, it was drastically less than that given to blue areas; a full 92 percent of the money went to Biden-leaning counties.
As I reported last month, CTCL just announced its list of beneficiaries leading up to the 2024 election cycle. While CTCL did not specify how it chose its beneficiaries, most of the jurisdictions picked lean heavily Democratic and are located in key swing states, just like in 2020. It looks like CTCL is hoping to replicate its success in 2020, although this time largely under the guise of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.
While 24 states have enacted bans or restrictions on private money being used to administer elections, some states’ Democrat governors have vetoed such bans, including Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“Private money has no place in public election infrastructure,” Banks told The Daily Signal. “Most Democrat-controlled states will never prevent their Big Tech partners from influencing their elections. … A Republican House majority needs to step up and pass national legislation to prevent private actors from funding election organizations.”
In 2021, Banks was one of 13 House Republicans who backed legislation amending the Internal Revenue Code to prohibit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations from directly funding official election administration. With their new majority, House Republicans must now pay attention to the left’s secret funding apparatus and use their power to stop it — or, if Democrats in the Senate or President Joe Biden shoot it down, force them to defend the privatizing of elections.
Another heavily funded get-out-the-(Democratic)-vote scheme House Republicans must crack down on are Democrats’ use of 501(c)(3) “charities” that micro-target and register potential Democratic voters, despite the IRS prohibiting such groups from engaging in “voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates.”
As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel notes, groups such as the New Georgia Project (which The New York Times lauds for helping turn Georgia into a blue state by registering tens of thousands of voters) and Mind The Gap (a leftist Super PAC that advises donors to bankroll voter registration nonprofits) are explicit about electing Democrats, yet they face no fines or retribution from the IRS. Just as the GOP-controlled House went after the IRS’ latest funding boost on Monday, it should also discipline the agency for blatantly ignoring these voter registration “charities” and their obvious partisanship.
Looks like the House GOP has got its work set out.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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