An initiative led by The Center for Tech and Civic Life – a nonprofit group that controversially used funds from Mark Zuckerberg to boost turnout for Democrats in the 2020 election – is purchasing facilities for local election offices to store voting machines and ballots.
The private financing of American electoral infrastructure comes from the Alliance for Election Excellence (AEE), which was launched with nearly $100 million in April 2022 under the leadership of Tiana Epps-Johnson and the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). The CTCL reportedly overruled local election officials and increase turnout in almost exclusively Democratic districts through mail-in voting in the 2020 cycle. Proving the partisan conflict of interest, the CTCL supported many election offices’ shifts to vote-by-mail and allegedly accessed mail-in ballots ahead of the election using hundreds of millions of dollars from the Facebook founder’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
A press release from the AEE reveals that it has been funding operations for Macoupin County, Illinois, as the county is one of the alliance’s “Centers for Election Excellence.”
“As a Center for Election Excellence, and part of the initial cohort making up the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, they received grant funding allowing them to purchase a building for more secure and accessible space to administer elections,” explains the announcement.
Pete Duncan, the Macoupin County Clerk, stressed how the space would be use to store voting machines and ballots, which could potentially cause a conflict of interest:
“We’ve run out of space in general but the big thing was there simply was no real secure storage space for our voting machines and ballots – two things that absolutely need to be secured – and the space became difficult to manage when we needed to add in-person voting to already overcrowded, unsecured space.”
“The $500,000 grant will be used to purchase and update the new building. Conveniently located directly across from the county courthouse, it will serve as a secure location for equipment as well as allow for an independently accessible space for early voting,” explains the AEE.
Controversial Zuckerberg Group Purchases Storage Center For ‘Voting Machines And Ballots’ For Election Offices Ahead Of 2024.