The Big Rapids city clerk is leveraging grant funding from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to cover expenses for the 2024 election, despite controversies surrounding the group’s involvement in 2020 elections.
City Clerk Tamyra K. Gillis told the city commission on Monday she landed a $20,000 grant from CTCL, along with another $10,000 grant from the Institute for Responsive Government.
Gillis plans to spend the grants on new laptops, wages and training for election workers, new voting booths, and mailing ballots and power equipment for the November election, the Big Rapids Pioneer reports.
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“We could very easily spend $2,000 to $3,000 just mailing out ballots,” Gillis said. “This will pay for ballots, envelopes, and any kind of supplies we need.”
Michigan voters sued Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in 2020 for funneling more than $16 million in private funding from the Chicago-based CTCL mostly to Democratic cities and counties to get-out-the-vote ahead of the 2020 presidential election, according to The Detroit News.
While CTCL dismissed the lawsuit as “frivolous,” analysis shows millions in funding was paid out to urban, predominantly Democrat district election officials, including $7.4 million to Detroit, and six-figure sums to 19 other cities that voted overwhelmingly for President Joe Biden.
The funding stemmed from a $350 million donation to CTCL from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, through the couple’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
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Influence Watch notes CTCL is also funded by left-of-center organizations including the Skoll Foundation, Democracy Fund, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
The Associated Press noted in 2020 the so-called “Zuckerbucks” flowing through CTCL “comes with a new set of questions about donor transparency, motivations and the influence of groups and figures that are not democratically accountable.”
Others, including voters who sued Benson, claimed the infusion of private money violated state law, and resulted in an advantage for Democrats.
“It is really unseemly to have private groups paying local officials,” Thor Hearne, the attorney who represented Michigan voters, told The News in 2020. “If anyone wants to be partisan operatives just do so in a way that complies with the rules and doesn’t undermine the integrity of the election.”
In total, CTCL gave $16.8 million to 466 jurisdictions in Michigan, with research from Capital Research Center showing grants to counties former President Donald Trump won averaged $0.45 on a per capita basis, compared to grants averaging $1.83 to counties President Joe Biden won.
“CTCL’s 39 largest per capita grants (in Michigan) went to cities which Biden won, receiving an average of 17 percent of all votes cast and giving Biden roughly 1 million votes, or one-third of all votes he received across Michigan,” Influence Watch reported.
The Institute for Responsive Government has distributed $6 million “to support local elections offices in states that have prioritized the future of their voting systems” so far in 2024.
That effort is also tied to the Skoll Foundation and a movement toward automatic voter registration.
IRG’s advisors include:
- Kathy Boockvar, former Democrat secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- Kathleen Sebelius, former Democrat governor of Kansas and Obama cabinet secretary
- Steve Bullock, former Democrat governor of Montana
- Cristóbal Alex, former Biden deputy cabinet secretary
- Catherine “Kiki” McLean, former Hillary Clinton senior advisor
- Tiana Epps-Johnson, Founder and Executive Director with the Center for Tech and Civic Life
While Gillis, Big Rapids’ clerk, notes the Institute is endorsed by Benson’s Bureau of Elections, and its grant from the institute will be used exclusively for nonpartisan election planning and efficiency efforts, it remains unclear what other Michigan cities or counties are receiving similar support.
The funding follows a lawsuit from Republicans challenging Benson’s agreement with the Biden-Harris administration they claim leverages federal Veterans Affairs and Small Business Administration sites in Democratic areas of the state for voter outreach.
There’s similar concerns with Benson’s youth voter outreach, which has involved the secretary of state hosting events in Lansing, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Marquette, Traverse City, Highland Park, and Battle Creek – all areas that voted overwhelmingly for President Joe Biden in 2020.