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> let me recall that it’s controlled by Zuckerberg who spent $419 million to influence US election administration in a seemingly partisan way For more context,

> let me recall that it’s controlled by Zuckerberg who spent $419 million to influence US election administration in a seemingly partisan way For more context, from: https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/zuck-bucks-conspiracies https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/zuck-bucks-consp... > He offered nearly half a billion dollars in grants to any election official who wanted one, as long as those officials spent it on what a lot of people would consider mundane essentials: ballot sorters, drop boxes, poll workers and — because it was 2020 — hand sanitizer. > And when those election officials applied for more money than he originally offered, he kicked in another $119 million to satisfy the rest of the requests. > At a time when Republicans are rapidly restricting access to the ballot box in states across the country, spending nearly half a billion dollars to do the exact opposite of that is tantamount to a partisan choice. Or, at least, it was bound to be viewed that way.

generj 4y ago
Expanding and insuring ballot box access shouldn’t be considered partisan. That it is represents a failure in whatever party seeks to restrict voting.
- hammock 4y ago
  Part of the reason Zuck Bucks are viewed as partisan is because of the way in which they ended up being deployed. >On average, Biden counties received $2.85 per vote, compared to Trump counties that only received $0.89. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10090603/Mark-Zuckerberg-funneled-419-5MILLION-nonprofits-fund-administration-2020-election.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10090603/Mark-Zucke...
  - generj 4y ago
    But couldn’t that simply be explained by GOP counties applying for less aid? So long as every county could receive funds equally, the fact some received less isn’t at all damning.
    - colpabar 4y ago
      So if someone like elon musk or peter theil did something like this, they gave $419 million to a bunch of red states all while aggressively promoting trump, would you still claim it's "not damning"? This is an example of an extremely wealthy person influencing an election, plain and simple. It's odd to me that we're all just supposed to be ok with it.
      - solar-ice 4y ago
        Are there stories of red counties applying for the money and not getting it? Or perhaps it was only marketed towards Dems? What’s the argument as to what happened here?
        irthomasthomas 4y ago
        From zucks own form 990 IRS filing. CTCL awarded all larger grants – on both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas. E.g. https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-bucks-in-key-states/ https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        generj 4y ago
        That’s not an answer though. The parent to your comment is asking what caused CTCL to give more to Democratically aligned counties. Everyone agrees it happened - I am just unconvinced it has a strictly partisan explanation. They are asking for proof it’s malicious. Just stating there is a difference in funding isn’t proof the CTCL acted with partisanship. There are many latent variables besides GOP/Dem, Urban/Rural that could cause the difference. For example when examining barriers to voting, time spent in line or number of polling places/capita are easy KPIs. Urban areas tend to score poorly on these metrics. If the funding was allocated by these metrics urban areas will win more funding. There are many reasons a totally non partisan group would prioritize grants to urban areas. Chief among them might be that partisans have deliberately underfunded urban locations and sometimes been caught saying the reason was for their partisan gain. Or the simplest explanation: a party that discourages voter turnout is in charge or rural areas. Officials in those counties are less likely to ask for funding that makes voting easier.
  - driverdan 4y ago
    Correlation is not causation and Daily Mail is trash.
    - klray 4y ago
      The Daily Mail's sidebar is trash, selected articles sometimes have a high level. They seem to use their network of paparazzi/journalists to actually research facts on the ground. It is paid for by the fact that 95% of the content is indeed trash that sells. But the 5% that isn't trash contains classic what/when/where/how style facts in great detail. For select topics like the trucker protests in Canada the Daily Mail is one of the best publications.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        No, the Mail is all trash. But they're also notorious plagiarists (in the modern way, where you quickly rewrite somebody else's story.) So if you have a scoop that panders to a reactionary audience, the Mail will steal it, not link back to you, and become the outlet who becomes the main social media share for it. They will do no checking or verification on the story beforehand, but if it eventually turns out to be a made-up story, they'll just delete it. They've already got the juice, so now that it turns out you're wrong they're happy to refer people to you for the credit. I even remember noticing they stole one of their uplifting weight-loss stories from another tabloid. edit: they have lots of photos, though, which is the best thing about tabloids.
irthomasthomas 4y ago
"Zuckerberg and Chan tapped prominent Republican election lawyer Michael Toner to review the grants CTCL awarded last year to counties and other jurisdictions across the country.” Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, “discovered that more Republican jurisdictions, defined as municipalities that voted for Trump in 2020, applied for and received grants from CTCL" https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-elections-group-awarded-more-grants-to-gop-counties/ar-AARRjS7 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-el... Looking past the raw number of grants to the total amount of money granted, however, from zucks form 990 IRS filing. CTCL awarded all larger grants – on both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas. E.g. https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-bucks-in-key-states/ https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-...
- philjohn 4y ago
  On pure scale alone, surely urban areas have far more voters, and therefore more need for funds than much smaller red counties?
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  >The group that got the bulk of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money — the Center for Tech and Civic Life — sent some 2,500 grants to government elections offices in 48 states. Defenders of Mr. Zuckerberg contend that more grants went to Trump areas while conveniently ignoring the fact that the vast amount of money was targeted to critically important areas for Mr. Biden. In fact, approximately 160 of the 2,500 grants were for $400,000 or more and totaled a whopping $272 million — and 92% of the money flowed to jurisdictions that Mr. Biden carried. [1] >Much of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money is documented by CTCL’s tax filings. The January 2022 report shows grants of $860,000 to Kenosha, $1.2 million to both Green Bay and Madison, $1.7 million to Racine, and $3.4 million to Milwaukee. These five critical cities alone received about $8.5 million of the $10.1 million that flowed into Wisconsin from CTCL, and $5.1 million dollars of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money was spent in Arizona. Four difference-making counties — Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Coconino — were carried by President Biden and received nearly 76% of CTCL’s grants. This funding helped Biden grow his turnout by nearly 700,000 votes in funded counties over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 total. CTCL sent $45 million to Georgia — more than any other state in the country — and 94% of the funds went to jurisdictions carried by Mr. Biden. [1] It is pretty clear that pushing extremely well-funded get out the vote operations in highly democrat areas in the most key swing states is enough to swing an election. This is dangerously partisan. [1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/12/mark-zuckerbergs-donations-rigged-the-2020-electio/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/12/mark-zucker...

generj 4y ago

Expanding and insuring ballot box access shouldn’t be considered partisan. That it is represents a failure in whatever party seeks to restrict voting.

hammock 4y ago
Part of the reason Zuck Bucks are viewed as partisan is because of the way in which they ended up being deployed. >On average, Biden counties received $2.85 per vote, compared to Trump counties that only received $0.89. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10090603/Mark-Zuckerberg-funneled-419-5MILLION-nonprofits-fund-administration-2020-election.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10090603/Mark-Zucke...
- generj 4y ago
  But couldn’t that simply be explained by GOP counties applying for less aid? So long as every county could receive funds equally, the fact some received less isn’t at all damning.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    So if someone like elon musk or peter theil did something like this, they gave $419 million to a bunch of red states all while aggressively promoting trump, would you still claim it's "not damning"? This is an example of an extremely wealthy person influencing an election, plain and simple. It's odd to me that we're all just supposed to be ok with it.
    - solar-ice 4y ago
      Are there stories of red counties applying for the money and not getting it? Or perhaps it was only marketed towards Dems? What’s the argument as to what happened here?
      - irthomasthomas 4y ago
        From zucks own form 990 IRS filing. CTCL awarded all larger grants – on both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas. E.g. https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-bucks-in-key-states/ https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        generj 4y ago
        That’s not an answer though. The parent to your comment is asking what caused CTCL to give more to Democratically aligned counties. Everyone agrees it happened - I am just unconvinced it has a strictly partisan explanation. They are asking for proof it’s malicious. Just stating there is a difference in funding isn’t proof the CTCL acted with partisanship. There are many latent variables besides GOP/Dem, Urban/Rural that could cause the difference. For example when examining barriers to voting, time spent in line or number of polling places/capita are easy KPIs. Urban areas tend to score poorly on these metrics. If the funding was allocated by these metrics urban areas will win more funding. There are many reasons a totally non partisan group would prioritize grants to urban areas. Chief among them might be that partisans have deliberately underfunded urban locations and sometimes been caught saying the reason was for their partisan gain. Or the simplest explanation: a party that discourages voter turnout is in charge or rural areas. Officials in those counties are less likely to ask for funding that makes voting easier.
- driverdan 4y ago
  Correlation is not causation and Daily Mail is trash.
  - klray 4y ago
    The Daily Mail's sidebar is trash, selected articles sometimes have a high level. They seem to use their network of paparazzi/journalists to actually research facts on the ground. It is paid for by the fact that 95% of the content is indeed trash that sells. But the 5% that isn't trash contains classic what/when/where/how style facts in great detail. For select topics like the trucker protests in Canada the Daily Mail is one of the best publications.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      No, the Mail is all trash. But they're also notorious plagiarists (in the modern way, where you quickly rewrite somebody else's story.) So if you have a scoop that panders to a reactionary audience, the Mail will steal it, not link back to you, and become the outlet who becomes the main social media share for it. They will do no checking or verification on the story beforehand, but if it eventually turns out to be a made-up story, they'll just delete it. They've already got the juice, so now that it turns out you're wrong they're happy to refer people to you for the credit. I even remember noticing they stole one of their uplifting weight-loss stories from another tabloid. edit: they have lots of photos, though, which is the best thing about tabloids.

irthomasthomas 4y ago

"Zuckerberg and Chan tapped prominent Republican election lawyer Michael Toner to review the grants CTCL awarded last year to counties and other jurisdictions across the country.” Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, “discovered that more Republican jurisdictions, defined as municipalities that voted for Trump in 2020, applied for and received grants from CTCL" https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-elections-group-awarded-more-grants-to-gop-counties/ar-AARRjS7 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-el... Looking past the raw number of grants to the total amount of money granted, however, from zucks form 990 IRS filing. CTCL awarded all larger grants – on both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas. E.g. https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-bucks-in-key-states/ https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-...

philjohn 4y ago
On pure scale alone, surely urban areas have far more voters, and therefore more need for funds than much smaller red counties?
OrvalWintermute 4y ago
>The group that got the bulk of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money — the Center for Tech and Civic Life — sent some 2,500 grants to government elections offices in 48 states. Defenders of Mr. Zuckerberg contend that more grants went to Trump areas while conveniently ignoring the fact that the vast amount of money was targeted to critically important areas for Mr. Biden. In fact, approximately 160 of the 2,500 grants were for $400,000 or more and totaled a whopping $272 million — and 92% of the money flowed to jurisdictions that Mr. Biden carried. [1] >Much of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money is documented by CTCL’s tax filings. The January 2022 report shows grants of $860,000 to Kenosha, $1.2 million to both Green Bay and Madison, $1.7 million to Racine, and $3.4 million to Milwaukee. These five critical cities alone received about $8.5 million of the $10.1 million that flowed into Wisconsin from CTCL, and $5.1 million dollars of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money was spent in Arizona. Four difference-making counties — Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Coconino — were carried by President Biden and received nearly 76% of CTCL’s grants. This funding helped Biden grow his turnout by nearly 700,000 votes in funded counties over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 total. CTCL sent $45 million to Georgia — more than any other state in the country — and 94% of the funds went to jurisdictions carried by Mr. Biden. [1] It is pretty clear that pushing extremely well-funded get out the vote operations in highly democrat areas in the most key swing states is enough to swing an election. This is dangerously partisan. [1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/12/mark-zuckerbergs-donations-rigged-the-2020-electio/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/12/mark-zucker...