WorldNetDaily has long promoted false and misleading claims about how money given to local election officials by a Mark Zuckerberg-funded foundation to help put on a pandemic-hobbled 2020 presidential election — and that dishonesty started not too long after the election itself. Bob Unruh fretted about it in an October 2021 article:
An analysis of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin is focusing on the facts that election laws were changed – illegally – during the voting process and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg turned over millions of dollars to election officials – outside the legally recognized campaign-donation processes.
And whether those actions had an impact of Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory.
[…]Then, too, the state’s metro areas of Madison, Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay benefited from more than $6 million in donations directly to their election coordinators and judges from money given by Zuckerberg to his Center for Tech and Civic Life, which handed out the cash.
The process “allowed a single billionaire to route his money outside the normal campaign finance system to election referees,” Just the News reported.
Further, the money came with strings, such as the requirement to do voter registration drives “among specific minority groups that tend to vote Democrat,” the report said.
Unruh offered no evidence from those officials that voter registration drives specifically targeted Democrats. Spending of the money in Madison, for example, targeted Hispanic voters and those of the Hmong community, but one official pointed out that it was ignorant to assume all voters of a particular ethnic background would vote one way or another.”
Another October 2021 article by Unruh hyped a report by a partisan group attacking the Zuckerberg money:
Research reveals that Mark Zuckerberg handed over a total of $419.5 million to the Center for Technology and Civil Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and the two groups used it to buy Democrat votes.
Essentially.
[…]With that money, a person could purchase 137,540,983 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Or 276,550 new Ferrari F8 Tributos, or 278 homes in San Francisco.
Or one presidential election.
The warning comes from William Doyle, a principal researcher at Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute in Irving, Texas, who explained his findings in a report at The Federalist.
He said Zuckerberg’s money was used “to turn out likely Democratic voters.”
Not through traditional political spending, but through a “targeted, private takeover of government election operations by nominally non-partisan – but demonstrably ideological – non-profit organizations.”
But there are flaws in Doyle’s conclusions, as Yahoo News writer Jon Ward pointed out:
Doyle’s op-ed complains that more of Zuckerberg and Chan’s money went to large cities than to rural areas, where Republicans tend to be much stronger.
But that’s not de facto evidence of partisan intent. Highly populated localities need more resources to run an election where there are far more voters.
A more substantive complaint is that in metro areas of swing states, more Democratic-leaning portions of those regions got Zuckerberg funding while more moderate metro areas, with higher numbers of Republican voters, did not. Doyle alleges this happened in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where of the four major counties, the two that Biden won — Dallas and Tarrant counties — got Zuckerberg grants through CTCL, and the two that Trump won — Denton and Collin counties — did not.
But CTCL has said it gave grants to any counties that requested them. And in addition, the two big Dallas-Fort Worth counties that Trump won — and that did not get Zuckerberg funding — nonetheless saw a bigger increase in voter turnout than the two counties that did get the money from Zuckerberg and Chan.
An April 2022 article by Art Moore touted an anti-Zuckerberg propaganda film:
A spokesman for Mark Zuckerberg dismissed as “neither new nor newsworthy” an upcoming documentary by conservative activist David Bossie that charges the Facebook founder’s $400 million to to fund election operations was intentionally channeled largely to three key swing states in an effort to defeat Donald Trump.
Bossie’s Citizens United Productions is the producer of “Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” which will debut next Tuesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. After the debut, it will be available for streaming at Rigged2020.com.
The documentary contends the Zuckerberg money persuaded governmental entities to adopt policies that compromise vote integrity, including mail-in ballots and increasing the number of ballot drop boxes. The $400 million was distributed through the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.
But Bloomberg pointed out that the film’s purpose is to serve as right-wing propaganda, however shoddy, to advance Trump’s bogus stolen-election narrative:
The film, which premiered at Mar a Lago earlier this month and stars the former president, isn’t so much a movie as an expression of right-wing paranoia. But even so, Rigged, and the swirl of attention around it, is worth talking about for what it says about the ability of Zuckerberg, and his company, Meta, to navigate a political environment that seems more hostile than ever to big tech companies.
It probably doesn’t spoil things to say that Rigged, which you can stream for $4.99, doesn’t make a persuasive case that the election was stolen by Zuckerberg or anyone else. Its central claim–that more pandemic aide went to election boards in Democratic-leaning cities than to Republican-leaning ones–could be explained by the fact that left-leaning cities were generally harder hit by Covid in 2020. What the film actually does is attempt to backfill the claim that Trump was somehow actually got more votes in 2020 than he was given credit for.
Nevertheless, a column later that month by Tamar Alexia Fleischman gushed over the film in an interview with Bossie:
Though leftist media have said snarky things about “Rigged,” it seems that they never saw it. The 40-minute film doesn’t make outlandish or unfounded claims. Rather, it puts visuals to the uncontested fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated over $400 million to “help” certain localities run the 2020 election and heighten voter turnout. They made no effort to conceal these donations; rather, they were quite boastful.
[…]I pointed out that New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, etc. – supposedly representing America’s elite, educated class – only had the most superficial, facile and lowbrow comments about his film, mostly involving what wine was served. I further noted that these magazines anxiously employ investigative reporters to cover the deaths of fashionable socialites, but utilize cut-and-paste techniques regarding the crux of our democracy.
Bossie agreed. “Right. That goes to the Big Lie. If they give any credence to the fact that there may be facts to support (that there were problems with the election), that’s everything to them. That’s why they have to be so superficial.”
Fleischman concluded by gushing: “Thank you, David Bossie, for your generous time. We look forward to your future projects!”
That dishonesty continues to this day, such as in a March 25 article by Unruh:
Officials in the city of Milwaukee have decided to grab $1 million Zuckerbucks just as voters in the state of Wisconsin are considering whether to make that move a violation of the state constitution.
Zuckerbucks are a reference to the $400 million plus handed out by Mark Zuckerberg during the 2020 election. It was turned over to elections officials – outside of any election reporting system – and they often used it to recruit Democrat voters.
It is thought to be one of two significant vote influence operations that affected the 2020 results, the other being the FBI’s interference when it told media corporations to suppress accurate reporting about Biden family scandals documented in a computer abandoned by Hunter Biden.
[…]In 2020, out of the $10 million in Zuckerbucks given to Wisconsin cities, $8.5 million went to five Democrat cities.
Unruh censored the fact that any jurisdiction that wanted the money could have gotten it, and that it’s not illegal or deceptive to encourage people to vote.