AMAC Exclusive – By Sam Adolphsen
Late last week, South Dakota became the latest of more than a dozen states to outlaw so-called “Zuckerbucks” in elections after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pumped more than $350 million into the American elections system ahead of the 2020 contest. But even as Republicans move to get private money out of state and local election offices, the Biden administration has quietly been working around the clock on a radical plan to inject even more woke corporate dollars into the American elections system.
In 2020, under the guise of “COVID-19 relief,” Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg distributed “grants” to thousands of election departments throughout the country through a nonprofit called the “Center for Technology and Civic Life” (CTCL). Subsequent analysis showed, however, that less than 1% of the funds went toward actual personal protective equipment or other materials to help prevent COVID transmission. Moreover, CTCL “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for Biden,” and the organization funded individuals from liberal outfits like the Brennan Center to go into communities for “voter outreach” in key swing states like Wisconsin and Georgia.
In response, state legislatures throughout the country have worked to keep private money out of election administration alongside other commonsense election reforms like Voter ID and banning ballot harvesting. But Democrats were quick to push back, insisting that not allowing billionaires to finance elections amounts to “voter suppression.”
Now, the Biden administration is falling back on its “failsafe” plan to attack election integrity, activating a strategy they have been laying the groundwork for since very early in the Biden administration, way back when a gallon of gas still cost less than a Big Mac.
This plan was first uncovered by Stewart Whitson, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, who wrote about Executive Order 14019 titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” just a few weeks after it was released by the Biden administration.
So what is the “failsafe” plan of the administration? What does EO 14019 do exactly?
The plan is sinister but simple. Biden’s EO orders the full strength of the federal government to develop and execute what amounts to voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in every precinct around the country. While this may sound innocent enough and even like a good idea, the entire scheme will be funded by private organizations – no doubt liberal-leaning ones – and orchestrated by the federal government, effectively giving bureaucrats free reign to influence elections.
In September, the White House released a statement detailing some of the initial steps in the plan. The press release touts the effort to “leverage the resources of the federal government to increase access to voter registration services and information about voting.”
It goes on to list the get-out-the-vote related strategic plans underway in the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing, Justice, Interior, and even, of all things, the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
These federal agencies may not typically have much in common, but now they have all been united around an effort to “facilitate participation in the electoral process.” They will do this by submitting their “strategic plans outlining the ways that the agency can promote nonpartisan voter registration and voter participation.”
And who are all those plans going to for approval and implementation? None other than Susan Rice, former national security advisor for President Obama, and current head of the Domestic Policy Council for President Biden. Rice has developed a reputation as a far-left partisan and shows no signs of changing course now.
Along with the continued campaign by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland to sue and try to scare states away from election integrity reforms, these federal departments will use their current funding and work activities to push and help make permanent voting activities like universal mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting that originally led to concerns about election integrity in 2020.
They also will “help” people fill out their voter registration or ballot applications on-site at federal offices located all over the country. Should federal government bureaucrats, who vote heavily Democratic, really be standing over voters’ shoulders while they cast their ballots?
Some of the work will also be done by hired guns. The executive order states that the Biden administration will be “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”
So what groups will the federal government be paying to post up in federal agency buildings to help sign people up to vote? And how will they guarantee they are “nonpartisan” in who they help? Right now, answers to questions like those are still unclear, but it’s safe to say that it won’t be the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute running the operation.
The alarming reality is that those “Zuckerbucks” which so many states are now banning will be nothing compared to the “Bidenbucks” that will be used to influence coming elections. Only this time, instead of Facebook, taxpayers will be footing much of the bill.
Thankfully, there is still a firewall between Biden’s election takeover effort and the state’s rights to run their own elections.
Some Republican members of Congress, led by North Carolina Congressman Ted Budd, have recognized the threat and have launched the beginnings of an investigation into the details of the scheme, including seeking information about what role the “nonpartisan” group Demos, a left-wing think tank, played in the plot.
Some states are also pushing back, in part by considering legislation that would require that state legislatures and governors see any communications and funding coming from the Biden administration that would impact state and local elections.
The Biden administration and the full strength of the federal government will not back down easily, but states must fight back to protect the integrity of their elections and their rights and responsibilities as states.
Sam Adolphsen is the former chief operating officer at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. He currently serves as the policy director at the Foundation for Government Accountability and lives in Maine.