(Headline USA) Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $400 million last year to help fund election offices as they scrambled to inject the election with enough fraud and illegal rules changes to elect President Joe Biden.
Republican legislatures are working to ensure that Zuckerberg cannot buy another election.
At least eight GOP-controlled states have passed bans on donations to election offices this year as Republicans try to block outside funding of voting operations.
Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., introduced the End Zuckerbucks Act in July to prevent billionaires from buying America’s elections.
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The legislation often comes as part of Republican packages that also put new limits on how voters can cast ballots and impose new requirements on county or city-based election officials.
The response is spurred by the knowledge that Zuckerberg’s money benefited Democrats in 2020.
The tech mogul’s social media platform also censors right-wing voices as part of its so-called campaign against misinformation.
Zuckerberg’s money was largely distributed through a nonpartisan foundation that had liberal roots.
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Conservative groups cite analyses that the money went disproportionately to Democratic-leaning counties in key states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.
“People saw that, and looked around, and they were increasingly concerned about why would you have a billionaire funding our elections through the backdoor,” said Jessica Anderson, executive director of the conservative group Heritage Action, which has pushed the bans in several states.
A spokesman for Zuckerberg declined to address the wave of new legislation.
The center distributed grants to 2,500 election offices nationwide, from Alaska to Florida.
The money was spent to get out the vote in heavily Democratic areas, to create new methods to vote without oversight, and to buy new trucks to haul voting equipment.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
