Voters in four battleground states have filed federal lawsuits to prevent the funneling of millions of dollars from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google, and other tech firms through the Center for Tech and Civic Life which they allege is attempting to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
According to a recent press release from the Amistad Project, voters in four key states have filed lawsuits in federal courts to block the alleged funneling of millions of dollars from Mark Zuckerberg, Google, and other Silicon Valley firms through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) which they allege is being used to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
The plaintiffs allege that the use of funds violates a federal law known as the Help America Vote Act which prohibits local governments from accepting federal election grants without state legislative approval and as a result forces the government to play favorites in the election process.
The complaints allege that CTCL used the funds to issue “grants” to local municipal governments which are allocating them to fund election activities. These efforts are intentionally targeting Democratic strongholds for the purpose of boosting voter turnout in those areas that delivered an overwhelming majority for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election in an effort to sway the 2020 elections, according to the lawsuits.
Phill Kline, the Director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, representing the voters in the four federal lawsuits, said in a statement: “Government cannot be in the business of playing favorites in elections. These targeted funds pay government officials to turn out the vote in blue jurisdictions while the governors in these states are making it difficult and actually discouraging in-person voting on Election Day in more conservative areas of the states. Government targeting Democrat portions of a state to increase voter turnout, while also targeting Republican areas of the state to make it harder to vote, violates the basic premise of American jurisprudence that we are all equal before the law.”
Kline added: “While Mark Zuckerberg can use his private funds to help voters, these city and county officials can’t use the funds from CTCL to favor a certain class of voters over another. America has a dark history of voter suppression before the Voting Rights Act became law. This rigging of the game is the other side of that same coin.”
Breitbart News reported on a complaint filed against the CTCL by the Wisconsin Voters Alliance earlier this month. In a press release from September 11th, the Wisconsin Voters Alliance states:
Cumulatively, CTCL has thus far granted $16.3 million to the five cities in Wisconsin and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which cast over 82% of their over one million combined total votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016. President Trump won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes and Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes that year.
In Wisconsin, CTCL has granted a total of $6.3 million in municipal funding from private sources to the Cities of Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine. The grants were issued directly to the cities and not the Wisconsin Board of Elections, which is responsible for managing elections throughout the state. A plurality of the funds — about 40% — went to support both vote-by-mail and early voting efforts. Around $1 million dollars went to “voter outreach and education efforts.”
Breitbart News recently reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, both of whom run the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative charitable foundation, plan to donate $300 million to help with preparations for the upcoming presidential election amidst the Chinese virus pandemic.
Zuckerberg and Chan plan to donate to two non-partisan organizations in order to help them recruit poll workers, rent polling places, purchase PPE kits for poll workers, and a number of other measures needed to ensure that voting stations will be safe as the pandemic continues. The organizations they have chosen are the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
Read the full press release from the Amistad Project here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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