Zuckerberg $350,000,000 Donation to Democratic GOTV efforts

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Zuckerberg $350,000,000 Donation to Democratic GOTV efforts

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Party of the working class.

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The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is a Chicago, Illinois-based center-left election reform advocacy group formed in 2012. The organization pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration. It has a wide reach into local elections offices across the nation and is funded by many left-of-center funding organizations such as the Skoll Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. [1] [2]

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Website: www.techandciviclife.org Location: CHICAGO, IL Tax ID: 47-2158694 Tax-Exempt Status: 501(c)(3) Budget (2018): Revenue: $1,044,134 Expenses: $841,577 Assets: $795,279 Formation: 2012 Type: Center-Left Election Reform Advocacy Group Founders: Tiana Epps-Johnson Donny Bridges Whitney May

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Tiana Epps-Johnson, Donny Bridges, and Whitney May, the founders of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, were co-workers at the New Organizing Institute (NOI) for several years before the organization dissolved in 2015. [4] NOI, described by a Washington Post reporter as “the Democratic party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry,” was a major training center for left-of-center digital activists over the decade of its existence. [5] Additionally, a few members of CTCL’s board of directors have strong ties to Democratic political operations, notably Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor to the elections program at Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, and Cristina Sinclaire, who was previously employed by NOI as well as by the progressive data service Catalist.

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The Center for Technology and Civic Life was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. The three co-founders have a long history in election policy with May being a former election official. The goal of the organization at its founding was to use data to streamline election administration and increase turnout in American elections. The organization has several programs and initiatives focused on election data and outreach to local election officials. [7]

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The Center for Technology and Civic Life has two main programming areas: “civic data” (a term it uses for election and candidate information), and training for election officials. CTCL has assembled resources to collect data from nearly every local election office; covering candidates on the ballot for each race, information describing those offices, and contact information for elected officials. The organization boasts that more than 250 million voters have accessed its data and that CTCL acts as a major supplier of ballot data for tech giants Facebook and Google. Additionally, Rock the Vote, the Women Donors Network, and the Voting Information Project have all used data provided by CTCL. [8] The Center for Tech and Civic Life also hosts an annual conference for election officials and left-of-center election policy activists. Left-leaning advocacy organizations represented at the CTCL’s 2019 conference included the Democracy Fund, e.thePeople/League of Women Voters, Metric Geometry & Gerrymandering Group, We Vote, MapLight, Democracy Works, and the National Institute on Money in Politics. [9] The center has a network of hundreds of election offices across the nation and works to train election officials. CTCL provides courses to election offices and travels to offices (for a fee of $5,000) to help local officials collect data, build websites, and develop messages to motivate voters. The center also operates ElectionTools.org, which provides free templates and forms for use by election officials. [10]

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The Center for Technology and Civic Life has been active in the wake of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic as part of an effort by the Democracy Fund to move voting in 2020 to mail-in elections. CTCL has held remote trainings and provides resources on voting by mail for election officials. [11] In August, 2020, CTCL announced that it had donated $6.3 million to five cities in Wisconsin, a swing state in the upcoming election. The organization explained that the funds are meant to ensure Wisconsin has a “safe, inclusive, and secure election.” [12] CTCL recommended the recipient cities to “Encourage and Increase Absentee Voting,” “Dramatically Expand Strategic Voter Education & Outreach Efforts, Particularly to Historically Disenfranchised Residents,” “Launch Poll Worker Recruitment, Training and Safety Efforts,” and “Ensure Safe and Efficient Election Day Administration.” [13] In the same press release, the Center for Tech and Civic Life announced it was creating a “COVID-19 Response Rural Grants Program” to provide similar safety measures across the country, which include drive-thru voting options, funds for voting facilities to hire additional staff, and expansions to the vote by mail system. [14] CTCL noted that it will prioritize certain recipients, especially those that fall under two categories: one being jurisdictions that are required to provide language assistance and have a higher percentage of historically disenfranchised residents, and the other being jurisdictions in states that have recently changed absentee voting laws or rules due to COVID-19. [15] In August 2020, CTCL gave $10 million to the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s elections office has an annual budget of $12.3 million. [16] CTCL designated the funds for upgrading equipment to process mailed-in votes, setting up 15 election offices for “in-person early voting using mail ballots,” opening 800 polling places in the city, installing at least 15 drop boxes for mail ballots in the city, and giving poll staffers bonuses for working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pennsylvania, like Wisconsin, is a swing state with many potential Democratic voters, and CTCL gave this grant a few months before the 2020 presidential election. CTCL gave an additional $2.2 million to Delaware County. In the summer of 2020, CTCL gave out a total of $15 million in grants. This is significantly more than what CTCL’s average annual budget was in previous years, which was around $1 million. [17] There is no public indication of where that money came from. On September 1, 2020, founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced they were donating $250 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life and $50 million to the Center for Election Innovation & Research. [18] Shortly after, CTCL stated its plans to regrant the money to local election jurisdictions across the United States to help them process mailed-in ballots and meet sanitation requirements imposed on polling stations in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. [19]

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