A Madison, Wisconsin official admitted the city’s recent decision to spend a $1.5 million “Zuckbucks” grant was based on the chance that voters would pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting its use. Wisconsinites approved such a measure during the state’s primary elections on Tuesday.
Madison City Attorney Mike Haas revealed to a local NBC affiliate on Wednesday that the city — which sits in a county Joe Biden won by more than 52 points during the 2020 election — “used most of the nearly $1.5 million in private grant money at its disposal to purchase a new machine to process absentee ballots.” Madison originally accepted the monies from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) in January 2023 for “planning and operating safe and secure elections,” according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
During the 2020 election season, 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.
Among other things, these funds went to help expand unsupervised election protocols including 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.
Madison received the $1.5 million grant as part of its membership with the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a five-year, $80 million venture launched by CTCL in 2022 that’s designed to “systematically influence every aspect of election administration” and advance Democrat-backed voting practices
