By Stephen Council,Tech Reporter Aug 27, 2024 (SFGate.com)
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, testifies during the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis” in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 2024.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty ImagesIn the leadup to the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $400 million to help Americans vote. “Voting is the single most important thing you can do as a citizen, and it’s the way that we hold our leaders accountable,” they said at the time. “We should be doing everything we can to make it easier for people to cast their ballots.”
What differece four yeas makes.
In a Monday letter to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, the billionaire CEO of Meta pledged not to donate money to support electoral infrastructure in the current cycle. He stressed the uniqueness of 2020’s pandemic-year election but also basically admitted that he’s ditching his effort to help people vote because of a Republican bullying campaign.
Zuckerberg wrote in the letter that his 2020 donations were “designed to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities.”
He continued: “Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”
Zuckerberg has faced Republican backlash over the 2020 donations since Joe Biden’s election — part of a broader campaign by some parts of the party to cut election funding and make results slower to certify. More than two dozen states limited or banned private election funding in response to the CEO’s donations, and an “End Zuckerbucks Act” has been repeatedly introduced in the House. As recently as July, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “election fraudsters” would be sent to prison, capping off the rant: “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”
Despite the Republican anger, Zuckerberg’s donations were felt, by election administrators, as a nonpartisan effort to bolster electoral safety and efficiency. An NPR story published a month after the election, titled “How Private Money From Facebook’s CEO Saved The 2020 Election,” gave an on-the-ground view. A director of voting services for a Pennsylvania county called the $2.5 million grant from a Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit a “lifesaver,” in the context of paltry federal funding. He bought 14 drop boxes for ballots and body cameras for pickup, plus paid staff to send out and count ballots. Vote-counting would’ve taken over a week, but with the money, his county finished in 36 hours.
Zuckerberg and Chan’s donations also funded drive-thru voting, nonpartisan voter education, polling place rentals, hazard pay for poll workers and personal protective equipment, according to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which disbursed the grants. Democratic-leaning counties were more likely to apply for the funding, researchers found, but the grants went out nationwide — almost every county in South Carolina and North Dakota, two states that Trump won four years ago, got money.
The Monday letter to Jordan was focused mostly on the Biden administration’s pressuring of Meta over COVID-19 content, and what Zuckerberg describes as “regret” over not being more outspoken. It also mentions a policy change, where the wait for fact-checking will no longer delay the promotion of potential disinformation.
The Republican X account for members of the House Judiciary Committee celebrated the letter, calling it a “Big win for free speech.” It’s unclear what will come from Meta’s looser moderation, so that’s a dubious claim. But the letter is a big win for anyone hoping to deprive localities of election funding.
Hear of anything happening at Meta or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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Aug 27, 2024
TECH REPORTER
Stephen Council is the tech reporter at SFGATE. He has covered technology and business for The Information, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and CalMatters, where his reporting won a San Francisco Press Club award.Signal: 628-204-5452
Email: stephen.council@sfgate.com
