Greater Georgia, a conservative voter mobilization and voter integrity organization started by former U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, is demanding accountability regarding $5.6 million donated by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. According to Loeffler and Greater Georgia, the funds were spent on the hotly contested 2020 Presidential election, and the organization is demanding transparency of how the money was spent and where.
According to reports on Fox News, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan gave $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which distributed the grants to 48 states and Washington, D.C., for election administration in the lead-up to the November 2020 election. Of that, $31 million went to Georgia for the general election, where Joe Biden narrowly won the state’s 16 electoral votes, beating then-President Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes. The report goes on to say that the center also gave $14.5 million to Georgia counties for the state’s two January runoff elections, where Democrats won both to flip the U.S. Senate majority to Democrats.
Greater Georgia points to the Fox News report that says “The Foundation for Government Accountability contends the grant money in Georgia and across the country was heavily weighted toward Democratic-leaning counties. While billed as election safety grants during the coronavirus pandemic, only a small portion in any of the states the foundation examined was used for personal protective equipment.”
In a Tweet, Greater Georgia said,” In 2020, Big Tech poured millions of dollars into local election offices in Georgia, shielded by dark-money groups. @GreaterGeorgia is demanding answers about why this took place and how that money was spent. Georgians want election integrity.”
According to the Fox News report, the Center gave about four times more in the Zuckerberg-financed grants to blue counties in Georgia as it gave to red counties.
An analysis by The Foundation for Government Accountability says that while data on how these grants were spent is opaque and incomplete, public records requests have shed some light on Zuckerberg’s expenditures. The analysis goes on to say that despite being messaged as “COVID-19 response grants,” the funds were largely spent on items not directly related to COVID-19. “Many counties reported spending virtually nothing on personal protective equipment (PPE). For example, among the three counties which received the most ‘Zuckerbucks’—Fulton, Cobb, and DeKalb—PPE expenses made up only 1.3 percent of total Zuckerbucks spending in these jurisdictions. Based on available data, nearly 10 times as much was spent on mail-in voting as was spent on PPE.”
The analysis goes on to say, “Counties reported spending ‘Zuckerbucks’ grants—which were allegedly intended to respond to COVID-19 and shore-up safety efforts—on items such as salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, and even attorneys’ fees for public records requests.”
The analysis also shows that of the funds designated for the Senate runoff, “more than 60 percent were allocated to the Democrat strongholds of Fulton and DeKalb counties alone. Yet again, Democrat districts were targeted, and Democrat votes were boosted.”
Of the $31 million for the General Election, the report goes on to say that this amount was “one of the highest amounts in the nation. This represents nearly nine percent of all ‘Zuckerbucks,’ despite Georgia accounting for just 3.2 percent of the nation’s population and three percent of the nation’s electoral votes.
