I think it’s fair to say that people’s eyes have become crossed with all of the election fraud talk from across the country.  We’ve been presented with tons of data, data tables, charts, graphs, and experts.  One topic that has caused a lot of discussion is “Zucker-Bucks”.  However, what are “Zucker-Bucks” anyways?  Until very recently, to me anyways, it simply meant Zuckerburg ponied up $350M to influence the outcome of the election.  While this is true, I didn’t really understand the “how” behind it, until now.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan reportedly donated a total of $350 million to CTCL (Center for Tech and Civic Life), which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.   The organization pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration. It has a wide reach into local elections offices across the nation and is funded by many left-of-center funding organizations.

Under section 170(c)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code of the IRS allows for external organizations to give charitable contributions to governmental units. In 2020, under this IRS provision the CTCL awarded millions of tax deductible dollars as 2,500 different “COVID-19 Response” grants to select cities and counties across the United States, Including Loudoun County ($355,000).  When distributing the money (grants) CTCL bypassed the VA state government and distributed the money directly to counties such as Loudoun County.  The problem here is that counties like Loudoun did NOT acquire these funds through the proper channels, ensuring HAVA (Help America Vote Act) and the VA Constitution requirements were met.  The amount of money being granted by CTCL should have been distributed equally per location and should have consulted with the state government for the distribution and not circumvent.  The acceptance of CTCL’s grants in this manner are considered violations and maladministration. 

Compliance with HAVA is to keep allocations of funds equal throughout the country to conform with the United States Constitution 14th and 15th Amendments.  Allowing funds to flow into certain cities and counties at different rates per person between localities created inequality in government by some counties getting more money for the operations of the elections and created a dilution of votes for those localities that did not have the extra funds.

The emails (obtained via FOIA’s) are between Richard Keech, LC Deputy Director of Office of Elections and Barb Lawrence, LC Grants Coordinator.  Given the fact that we just simply laid out how CTCL circumvented the VA State Government, and went directly to Loudoun County, one has to ask themselves what does Barb Lawrence mean by “less is better….we can decide what to share or not” as it relates to a FOIA request received from the Foundation for Government Accountability.