- Private election funding gives private groups the “power of the purse” over boards of elections — potentially giving them the ability to alter election outcomes based on how they target their spending
- There is evidence of partisan intent and effect of Zuck bucks spending on select county election administration in North Carolina and elsewhere
- North Carolina now bans private election administration funding, but election integrity advocates must remain watchful for other attempts to use private funds to influence how elections are administrated in North Carolina
This is part of a series of articles about problems with the 2020 election in North Carolina, most of which were detailed in the John Locke Foundation’s report “What Happened in 2020?,” and changes that have taken place since then. The other parts of the series deal with collusive lawsuit settlements altering election laws, mail voting, and same-day-registration “ghost voters.”
Private organizations spent nearly half a billion dollars on election administration in 2020, including millions in North Carolina. Recognizing the danger that such funding schemes pose to election integrity, the North Carolina General Assembly joined a majority of states in banning direct private funding of election work. There are still other ways groups try to influence election officials with funding, however.
The Dangers of Privatizing Election Administration Funding
The “power of the purse” has long been recognized as a central component of a government system of checks and balances. Montesquieu even said funding was the “most important point of legislation.” In a democratic system, part of that power lies in funding election administration.
But what if private groups with their own agendas started funding local election boards? How might that affect the integrity of our elections?
A 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service noted two problems with private funding of election administration. First, the distribution of private funds is “contingent on the choices of private entities.” This partially removes the power of the purse from elected legislators and county commissioners and places it in the hands of individuals and groups. Those individuals and groups then have the power to decide if a county board of elections receives that additional funding.
The report notes a related problem:
[D]onors, including foreign nationals, could use private funding for election administration to try to influence election outcomes, such as by targeting their assistance to jurisdictions with a particular partisan leaning.
As we will see, private election funding in North Carolina in the 2020 election fit such a pattern of targeted assistance.
The report noted that the largest private election funding by far was the $350 million that Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), funding that became popularly known as “Zuck bucks.”
Zuck Bucks Affected North Carolina Elections in 2020
CTCL spent over $7 million on election administration funding in 2020.
In June 2021, I spoke to the North Carolina Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee on evidence of the partisan effect and intent of that spending:
Much of the private election funding in the 2020 election came from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), an advocacy group founded by former employees of the New Organizing Institute, a group that trained digital organizers for Democratic and progressive groups. The Washington Post described the New Organizing Institute as the “Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”
The John Locke Foundation found more evidence of partisan intent in our 2022 report, “What Happened in 2020?” Thirty-one of North Carolina’s 100 counties received CTCL funds. Most of those counties received less than $1.00 per registered voter. The state’s two most Democratic-leaning counties, Orange and Durham, received much more — $2.60 per voter and $5.49 per voter, respectively.
Note: This was not a case of Democratic counties asking for funds while Republican counties rejected them. All county election boards in North Carolina were controlled by Democrats.
Our report also found evidence of a partisan effect of Zuck bucks (page 70). As seen in Table 1, counties that received CTCL funds had a slight increase in presidential voting turnout compared with those that did not. The increase was not evenly distributed by party, however. The relative turnout increased for CTCL counties was about three times as big for Democrats as for Republicans. That effect was also found in the other statewide races studied for the report.
Table 1: Center for Tech and Civic Life Funding and Turnout Change for 2016 and 2020 Democratic and Republican Presidential Candidates
Source: “What Happened in 2020?”
There was evidence of similar partisan intent and effect in other states.
North Carolina Banned Zuck Bucks, but Dangers Remain
Following advocacy from Locke and others, the General Assembly passed a bill to ban Zuck bucks in 2021, only to see it vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper.
The General Assembly rolled a Zuck bucks ban and several other election reforms into the 2023 budget. It prohibited the State Board of Elections, county elections boards, and county commissions from accepting “private monetary donations, directly or indirectly, for conducting elections, including employing individuals on a temporary basis.”
North Carolina is now one of 28 states that ban or restrict private election administration funding.
By then, CTCL and other progressives had already started working on another means of influencing election officials with their money. CTCL and other groups banded together to create the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence in 2022 with a stated goal of creating “a set of common values and standards” for election administration rather than directly funding conducting elections.
A joint research project of Locke and the Honest Elections Project revealed that the Alliance “is actually designed to systematically influence every aspect of election administration in target offices and push progressive voting policies.” To make matters worse, two North Carolina county boards of elections, Forsyth and New Brunswick, were part of the “initial cohort” of members.
Again, a combination of documentation and advocacy helped turn the tide. About a year after joining, both county election boards withdrew from the Alliance. The official reason for the withdrawal was that they did not have time to fulfill their obligations to the Alliance.
With less than three months until election day, it appears that no attempt will be made to inject large amounts of private funds into election administration this year. The “Zuck Bucks 2.0” incident, however, confirms that election integrity advocates must remain watchful for attempts to use private funds to influence how elections are administrated in North Carolina.
