STILL THINK THE ELECTION WASN'T RIGGED?

• Author: Hemingway, Mollie
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

"...An army of progressive activists [administered] the [2020 presidential] election at the ground level. Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg." IN the 2020 presidential election, for the first time ever, partisan groups were allowed--on a widespread basis--to cross the bright red line separating government officials who administer elections from political operatives who work to win them. It is important to understand how this happened in order to prevent it in the future.

Months after the election, Time magazine published a triumphant story of how the election was won by "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together...to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information." Written by Molly Ball, a journalist with close ties to Democratic leaders, it told a cheerful story of a "conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes," the "result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans."

A major part of this "conspiracy" to "save the 2020 election" was to use COVID as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting. This effort was enormously successful. Nearly half of voters ended up voting by mail, and another quarter voted early. It was, Ball wrote, "practically a revolution in how people vote." Another major part was to raise an army of progressive activists to administer the election at the ground level. Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Face-book founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg's help to Democrats is well known when it comes to censoring their political opponents in the name of preventing "misinformation." Less well known is the fact that he directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization led by Zuckerberg's wife Priscilla Chan, gave more than $400,000,000 to nonprofit groups involved in "securing" the 2020 election. Most of those funds--colloquially called "Zuckerbucks"--were funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter outreach organization founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. All three previously had worked on activism relating to election rules for the New Organizing Institute, once described by The Washington Post as "the Democratic Party's Hogwarts for digital wizardry."

Hush with $350,000,000 in Zuckerbucks, CTCL proceeded to disburse large grants to election officials and local governments across the country. These disbursements were billed publicly as "COVGD-19 response grants," ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.

According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Georgia received more than $31,000,000 in Zuckerbucks, one of...