DeKalb County is one of the most heavily Democrat counties in metro Atlanta. For perspective, this is the county that is largely responsible for sending Cynthia “I Hate Israel” McKinney and Hank “Don’t Tip Guam Over” Johnson to Congress.
The county also recently crowed about a grant that its Board of Election received. The $2 million grant comes with the county’s designation as a Center for Election Excellence by an organization that calls itself the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence. That organization is part of another group called the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
Here’s how local website Decaturish reported on the grant:
“I’m excited about this. It’s kind of a nerdy big deal,” said Board of Elections Chair Dele Lowman Smith. Lowman Smith said that since election offices are not allowed to receive grants directly, the lengthy application process was led by the county’s finance department.
Lowman Smith says the money will be put to good use. “This assists us in our plan moving forward to modernize and create a really voter-centric election process. There is a great deal of work yet to be done,” said Lowman Smith.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to engage with the best and the brightest working on elections across the country,” said Keisha Smith.
There are a couple of huge problems with this grant that DeKalb County is so excited about. The first issue is that the grant smacks of a violation of state law. Georgia’s 2021 election law — which Joe Biden gave the cute yet patently false nickname “Jim Crow on steroids” — bars local elections boards from receiving grants from philanthropic organizations like these.
In fact, Georgia Public Broadcasting, in its explainer on the new law from March 2021, mentions the group that gave money to DeKalb County.
“In the 2020 election, many rural and urban counties received grant funding from philanthropic outlets such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Schwarzenegger Institute,” GPB’s Stephen Fowler wrote. “Under the new law, those elections offices could no longer directly receive funding.”
Related: When Democrats Lose, It’s Voter Suppression. When They Win, It’s — Well, You Know.
The other thing about this grant that should lead us to be concerned is that the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence and its parent organization the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) are left-wing dark-money groups.
The Honest Elections Project (HEP), in conjunction with the John Locke Foundation, investigated the CTCL, and HEP released the two organizations’ findings in an epic Twitter thread last month.
“In April 2022, the left-wing Center for Tech and Civic Life & other nonprofit/companies formed an $80 million initiative called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence — targeting local election offices, offering participants grants, trainings, resources, and consulting,” HEP began. The thread goes on to explain that the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence’s “claim of being nonpartisan is completely dishonest.”
According to HEP’s findings, the CTCL is dripping with progressive dark money, including “eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund & Arabella Advisors’ New Venture Fund.”
If you’re wondering how these grants work, they’re basically those you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours deals.
“Local election offices receive access to funds from CTCL they can spend exclusively on services provided by left-wing companies and nonprofits, entirely outside normal public funding channels,” reports HEP.
On the other side of the transaction, “In exchange for receiving those grants and services, local election offices are expected to provide CTCL and its partners substantial in-kind contributions, at taxpayer expense.”
CTCL also played a role in the Zuckerbucks shenanigans in 2020.
HEP is calling on leaders in Georgia, including Attorney General Chris Carr, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and the State Election Board, to investigate the grant to DeKalb County.
“Allowing outside special interests to pump millions of dollars of private funding into election offices erodes the public’s trust in election administration, which is why Georgia and two-dozen other states have restricted private election funding over the last two years,” said HEP Executive Director Jason Snead in a statement. “DeKalb County and the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence’s brazen defiance of Georgia election law is a slap in the face to voters and their legislators.”
“The Honest Elections Project urges Attorney General Carr, Secretary of State Raffensperger, and the State Election Board open an investigation and take the proper steps to address this clear attempt by DeKalb County to evade Georgia law,” Snead concluded.
Hopefully, Carr and Raffensperger will do the right thing and uphold Georgia’s law. It’s a good law that protects Peach State voters, and the CTCL and other dark-money groups need to go on notice that they can’t mess around with Georgia’s elections.
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