A few days after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang he had no plans to get involved in this year’s general election as he had in years past, which he reiterated again in a recent letter to the House Judiciary Committee. Even so, election integrity advocates should be slow to breathe a sigh of relief. The election interference issues posed by “Zuckbucks” in 2020 still endure today through the nonprofit organizations Zuckerberg once partnered with. Not only do these threats still endure, but this year, left-leaning organizations may have set their sights on expanding their influence in rural and suburban America — some through grants and some through increased on-the-ground advocacy.
A press release from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), one of the primary organizations Zuckerberg previously helped fund, announced their new “2024 Rural and Nonmetro Election Infrastructure Grant Program” on Aug. 5. This comes after Republican members of the Committee on House Administration criticized election grants as disproportionately helping get-out-the-vote in left-leaning urban areas over rural areas. With this in mind, supporters of CTCL might attempt to argue that this new grant aimed at rural communities is just CTCL’s way of correcting past mistakes, but a holistic view of CTCL’s problematic tactics point to a more partisan motivation for moving beyond urban neighborhoods.
More money for rural counties might sound like a good thing at first, but it’s not if the money is coming from groups like CTCL. Although CTCL’s funds have disproportionately benefited Democrats in urban areas in years past, expanding funding to conservative rural areas is not a favorable solution because election grants from groups like CTCL tend to fund less secure voting practices like drop boxes and mobile voting sites. Private grants also led to the suspicious grants of authority to CTCL employees such as Michael Spitzer Rubenstein, who had an inappropriate amount of access to election facilities and absentee ballot boxes. Expanding CTCL funds to rural counties only expands election insecurity to rural areas.
Nonprofit election grants were so concerning in 2020 that 28 states enacted legislation limiting or banning the use of private funds to run elections, but even states that have banned private funds are not necessarily safe from undue influence from similar organizations. Rural and nonmetro areas in other states are certainly still vulnerable to other forms of nonprofit pressures and should still be alert to the Democrats’ overarching strategy to claw at rural, nonmetro areas that have traditionally run red.
‘Protect Democracy’ in Georgia
Georgia is a prime example of how left-leaning organizations have adjusted their struggle for dominance in rural areas after Zuckbucks were banned there. According to local sources, Peter Simmons, an attorney from the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, approached election officials in Macon-Bibb County during the May primary and urged them to certify the election despite a significant ballot mix-up concern that led even the liberal Macon NAACP to request a pause to the election. While Georgia has a certification deadline to keep in mind, it is telling that Protect Democracy has pushed for certification but not the enforcement of other election procedures leading up to certification that would increase election security.
For example, Protect Democracy proposed a rule at a state election board meeting earlier this year that would have greatly limited citizens’ ability to challenge voter eligibility and assist in voter list maintenance. Protect Democracy also did not support the rule on reconciliation before certification, which merely reiterates and clarifies current Georgia law requiring a comparison of the number of ballots cast in each precinct to the number of voters. If the numbers do not match up, the county superintendent is required by law to stop the recording of votes until the discrepancy is resolved.
Election officials should aim for clean voter rolls, timely reconciliation, and timely certification, but Protect Democracy only aims for timely certification and undermines the earlier steps in the process. This effectively promotes not just certification, but certification of inaccurate results.
Other Leftist Groups
Protect Democracy and CTCL are not the only leftist groups known to be expanding beyond big cities. U.S. Digital Response previously received funding from Zuckerberg and partnered with CTCL; it is a member of left-leaning organization U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and has proposed streamlining the grant process to help small communities. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also recently noted that the Harris-Walz campaign “look for votes in November beyond the friendly confines of Atlanta,” evidencing a greater trend.
Overall, there have been improvements to election procedures nationwide. Many states have embraced Zuckbucks bans, limited drop boxes, increased the ability to observe the election process, and more. However, there are still vulnerabilities, like mass mail-in voting and unenforced ballot reconciliation, and there are still active nonprofit organizations whose work undermines procedural safeguards.
Practically, this means that election integrity advocates in small towns should stay vigilant about the election process in their county and consider volunteering as a poll watcher or poll worker. Rural or urban, Zuckbucks ban or no Zuckbucks ban, Democrats and nonprofit organizations seek to alter demographics and increase influence wherever they can.
Josh Findlay is the director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s national Election Protection Project, where Anelise Powers is a policy analyst.
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