Old North News

Legislation on Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk would have North Carolina join other states that, since the 2020 general election, have banned election officials from accepting private money to help underwrite administrative costs. 

The legislation is in response to investigative reports into Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through the Center for Tech and Civic Life in the 2020 election.

In a possible sign of his intentions, Cooper, a Democrat, recently vetoed a separate election bill that tightened the absentee ballot process in the Tar Heel State. His office did not respond to a request for comment on the private funding legislation, Senate Bill 725.

Reports by the Capital Research Center (CRC), and other government watchdog groups, show that the largest portion of the Zuckerberg money, which some have called “Zuckerbucks”, went to Democratic areas – in some cases these areas received 10 times the funding as Republican areas.

Some states, including Georgia and Florida, banned the practice entirely, while others have proposed legislation. A Pennsylvania proposal would allow the practice if funds are disbursed evenly across the state. 

Ken Cuccinelli, the national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, applauded the North Carolina General Assembly for helping to “restore voters’ trust in the democratic process.”

“Make no mistake, the corrupting influence of big tech oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg manipulates the official voting apparatus and dilutes the voice and votes of Tar Heels in order to affect turnout,” Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general, said in a statement. “We urge Gov. Cooper to put politics aside in favor of North Carolina elections in which it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat, and to sign Senate Bill 725 into law without delay.”

Senate Bill 326, vetoed by the governor Dec. 2, would have required that, except for military and overseas voters, all completed applications and marked mail-in absentee ballots be returned to the county board by 7:30 p.m. on the day of the election, with certain exceptions.

Cooper said that the legislation accomplishes the opposite of what its supporters claim.

“Election integrity means counting every legal vote, but this bill virtually guarantees that some will go uncounted,” the governor said in a statement.

One of the largest beneficiaries of the Zuckerbucks was the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL). The group of former Democratic operatives received nearly $400 million leading up to the 2020 elections. As revealed by CRC research, local election officials were required to follow a set of voting practice guidelines in exchange for CTCL grants. The guidelines included pushing the use of mail ballots, and unrestricted locations of drop boxes for those ballots.