Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a series of bills over the past week banning the use of outside private money and ranked choice voting in elections.
On Monday, the Republican governor signed SB 117, which stipulates that “[a]ll costs and expenses relating to conducting elections must be paid for with public funds.” The passage of the bill makes Montana the 25th state to ban or restrict the use of private money in the conduction of elections.
During the 2020 election, nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) received hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. These “Zuckbucks” were poured into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered, such as by expanding unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, the grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.
Ahead of 2024, CTCL and other left-wing nonprofits are once again attempting to interfere in the electoral process under the guise of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million venture designed to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration” and advance Democrat-backed voting policies in local election offices. In its attempt to replicate CTCL’s strategy, the Alliance is attempting to skirt existing “Zuckbucks” bans by providing election officials with “scholarships” to cover Alliance membership costs. These scholarships are then “instantly converted into ‘credits’ that member offices can use to buy services from CTCL and other Alliance
