Mark Zuckerberg Claims His Foundation Won’t Meddle in Next Election After Backlash

The Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan notoriously poured hundreds of millions of “Zuckerbucks” into for the purpose of getting out the vote in Democrat-leaning areas in the 2020 election, claims it won’t repeat the process for the 2022 midterms.

However, while the nonprofit will not fund local election offices as it did in 2020, it won’t remain completely inactive. According to Associated Press, it will devote $80 million to a five-year program to a new initiative called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which will allow local election officials to apply for financial assistance to improve election processes.

This is considerably less than the more than $300 million the CTCL poured into bolstering mail-in ballot operations across key states in 2020.

The Associated Press report on the story links the CTCL’s decision to conservative backlash. The supposedly neutral newswire service describes concerns over tech billionaires’ interference in the 2020 election, exposed in this author’s book DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election, as “President Donald Trump’s election lies.”

Via AP:

The nonprofit that distributed most of the $350 million in donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to election offices in 2020 said Monday that it won’t disburse similar donations this year after backlash from conservatives suspicious that the contributions tilted the outcome of the presidential race toward Joe Biden.

Instead, the Center for Technology and Civic Life is launching a different program. Dubbed the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, the $80-million, five-year effort is intended to create a network for the nation’s thousands of local election officials, who can apply for aid to improve their technology and processes.

The 2020 effort by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, amid the COVID-19 pandemic fueled conservative anger and distrust of the presidential election outcome. At least eight GOP-controlled states passed laws last year banning private donations to election offices in reaction to Zuckerberg’s donations. Suspicion that the contributions — routinely referred to as “Zuckerbucks” by conservatives — helped Biden, a Democrat, has become a staple among those who believe in former President Donald Trump’s election lies.

Ben Labolt, formerly a spokesman for Barack Obama who now represents Zuckerberg and Chan, told AP that the 2020 donations were a one-off.

“As Mark and Priscilla made clear previously, their election infrastructure donation to help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic was a one-time donation given the unprecedented nature of the crisis,” said Labolt. “They have no plans to repeat that donation.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.