An initiative led by the Center for Tech and Civic Life — a nonprofit group that controversially used Mark Zuckerberg funds to boost Democratic turnout in the 2020 election — is buying facilities for local election offices to store voting machines and ballot papers.
Private funding for US election infrastructure comes from the Alliance for Election Excellence (AEE), which was launched with nearly $100 million in April 2022 under the leadership of Tiana Epps-Johnson and the Center for Tech and Civic Life ( CTCL). The CTCL reportedly overruled local election officials and increased turnout in almost exclusively Democratic districts through mail-in voting in the 2020 cycle. Proving the partisan conflict of interest, the CTCL supported the shift of many electoral offices to mail-in voting. correspondence and allegedly accessed mail-in ballots ahead of the election using hundreds of millions of dollars from the Facebook founder’s Chan Zuckerberg initiative.
A press release from the AEE reveals that it funded operations for Macoupin County, Illinois, because the county is one of the alliance’s “centers of electoral excellence.”
“As a Center of Electoral Excellence and part of the initial cohort forming the American Alliance for Electoral Excellence, they received a grant to purchase a building for a more secure and accessible space to administer the elections. “says the ad.
Pete Duncan, the Macoupin County Clerk, pointed out how the space would be used to store voting machines and ballots, which could potentially cause a conflict of interest:
“We’re running out of space in general, but the big problem was that there just wasn’t any real secure storage space for our voting machines and ballots – two things that absolutely need to be secure – and space became difficult to manage when we needed it. add in-person voting to an already crowded and insecure space.
“The $500,000 grant will be used to purchase and update the new building. Conveniently located directly across from the County Courthouse, it will serve as a secure location for equipment and allow for independently accessible space for early voting,” explains AEE.