Another day and even more purging and censoring by Facebook or Twitter or any number of “fill in the blank” appendages of the ruling class. Big Tech’s online censorship has made headlines, yet again, for suppressing dissenting opinions.
Its self-granted authority to determine whose voices are heard, empowered by the feckless impotence and purchased silence of elected officials, should surprise no one anymore. Less than four years ago, it was they who demanded “neutrality” in all things online. No blocking, no censorship, no interference. That was the mantra until it became politically imperative that “neutrality” be neutered.
In itself, all of that is troubling. But it’s not just the online meddling of your inherent rights that should concern you. Few are yet fully aware of the direct impact Facebook and its founder had on the farce that was our 2020 electoral process.
In the months leading up to November 3, tens of millions of dollars flooded into key urban areas in battleground states that had the power to, and in fact did, determine the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and some U.S. Senate races. This effort was conducted by an Internal Revenue Service-approved 501(c)(3) nonprofit that is barred under IRS regulations from explicitly providing support—financial or otherwise—to advance the agenda of one political party over another.
This particular nonprofit is the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), run by progressives formerly associated with the New Organizing Institute. While the nonprofit typically had been operating on a budget of just over $1 million, inl 2020 Mark Zuckerberg and his wife contributed $350 million to the CTCL as part of the Zuckerbergs’ overall strategy to promote “safe elections.”
But this wasn’t about “safe elections” at all. It was Big Tech doing the big rig—using private, charitable donations to dictate to city and county election officials how to “manage” their elections. This Zuckerberg effort, according to a report by the Amistad Project, is “contrary to both federal law and state election plans endorsed and developed by state legislatures with authority granted by the United States Constitution.”
What did some of the work done by CTCL look like?
Well, it gave more than $6 million to primarily blue urban areas in Wisconsin, such as Racine, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Madison. The funds were given to these cities to help boost voter turnout. Trust me, this is the age-old trick that some nonprofits use: target your “educational work” and “nonpartisan work” in areas where you’re likely to get 80 percent of what you want.
All that grant money enabled cities with heavily Democratic voting blocs to spend about $47 per vote versus areas that were more Republican, where perhaps only $4 to $7 was spent to boost voter turnout. In that scenario, it’s just a numbers game. The team spending up to 10 times as much money on turning out the vote is going to win just about every time.
In Pennsylvania—specifically Philadelphia—the Amistad Project through the Freedom of Information Act was able to obtain emails showing that CTCL paid election judges in Philadelphia and other election officials. CTCL mandated that Philadelphia increase its polling locations and to use drop boxes and eventually mobile pick-up units.
Moreover, Zuckerberg’s money allowed Philadelphia to “cure” absentee ballots in a manner not provided for in Republican areas of the state. The Amistad Project also noted that “in Democrat Delaware County, Pennsylvania, one drop box was placed every four square miles for every 4,000 voters. In the 59 counties carried by Trump in 2016, there was one drop box for every 1,100 square miles and every 72,000 voters.”
Who’s going to win that numbers game? It should be obvious and the results reflect the obvious.
Look at Georgia: nearly $16 million in grant money went to local election officials in the blue strongholds of Fulton, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties. Some have observed that those monies were used in ways that looked “a lot more like Democratic ‘Get-out-the-Vote’ (GOTV) efforts in major cities around the country than good government efforts to protect the integrity of the electoral process of all Americans, regardless of their party affiliation.”
But ensuring Democratic Party wins was the real aim the whole time. The Amistad Project notes:
Since September 1, 2020, the CTCL has made at least $63.7 million in grants to election commissions in 18 counties and two cities for what the CTCL calls the coronavirus “safe elections” project. More than 99.5 percent of this funding—$63.4 million—went to election commissions in 17 counties and two cities won by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The more we learn about what happened in the 2020 election, the less of a mystery it becomes.
CTCL is just one example—though a major one—of the highly questionable behavior that took place over the last few months. The behavior needs to be addressed, and based on some reports from state legislators, there are bills in the works that would outlaw Zuckerberg’s CTCL moving forward.
That’s good news because if Mark Zuckerberg gets away with his election interference last year, guess what you’ll see in 2022 and 2024? Can you imagine what a “get out the vote” program funded by the likes of Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg might look like with multiple organizations modeled on CTLC, each with hundreds of millions of dollars all pointed at battleground states? Republicans will never, ever win another election on the national level, let alone win a local election for dog catcher in a battleground state.
Sometimes tyranny comes through the front door in the middle of the night with booted thugs carrying guns. And sometimes it slips in through the back door under the guise of civic charities promising they are “working to ensure safe elections.” However tyranny enters, guess what: it’s still tyranny.