Mansfield Times

The Ashland County Board of Election applied for a grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a group identified by Influence Watch as a center-left election reform advocacy organization that pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration.

Ashland County applied for a COVID-19 grant from CTCL, Shannon Johnson, director of the Ashland County Board of Elections, told the Mansfield Times.

CTCL's primary funding sources include Google and Facebook. Johnson said she knew that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife gave the organization a $250 million contribution.

The Wisconsin Voters Alliance accused CTCL of sending millions of dollars limited to heavily Democratic areas. The funds were intended to boost voter turnout to sway the election statewide, the Wisconsin Voters Alliance alleged in their complaint filed with the Wisconsin Election Commission, PR Newswire reported. CTCL awarded millions of dollars in grants to five cities, which data shows have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, which represents the Wisconsin Voters Alliance, told PR Newswire they'd seen this type of activity before.

"Through much of last century, southern states made it difficult for blacks to vote and easy for white citizens to vote, promoting racism in the manner that they orchestrated their elections," Kline told PR Newswire. "Government targeting a demographic to increase turnout is the opposite side of the same coin as targeting a demographic to suppress the vote."

CTCL gave the cities of Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine, and Philadelphia, a total of $16.3 million directly, instead of to their state elections commissions, which manage elections statewide. Almost 40% of the funds went to early voting and vote-by-mail efforts, PR Newswire reported.

The five Wisconsin cities and one Pennsylvania city had cast more than 82% of their 1 million-plus votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016. President Trump won both states by narrow margins that year.

Johnson doesn't intend to check if CTCL distributes grant awards equitably and not just to Democratic strongholds.

The Wisconsin Voters Alliance thinks the use of CTCL funds already violates Wisconsin law that prohibits elections officials from influencing an election outcome or inducing persons to vote, PR Newswire reported.