Zuck’$ elex tilt to Dems in Pa.: report

Whistleblower docs say site ‘fueled fire’ of hate speech, knew of human trafficking

Private grants connected to Facebook helped local election offices in 2020 and skewed heavily in favor of Democraticleaning counties in Pennsylvania, a new report claims.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life doled out more money per registered voter to Democratic counties than Republican counties in the battleground state, an analysis by the publication Broad + Liberty said.

Blue counties not only got more from the organization but were given a jump-start on the grant information by top-ranking state officials, the report concluded, citing e-mails obtained through open-records requests.

The center, boosted by a $300 million donation from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been accused of similar unequal distribution of its grants in various states, although officials deny the claim and note the application for assistance was open to everyone.

But the analysis shows counties such as Mifflin and Mercer getting 66 cents and 73 cents per voter, respectively, while Democratic counties like Philadelphia and Centre received $8.87 and $7.70 per voter, respectively, according to the analysis.

Alleghany County, where Pittsburgh is located, got $2.18 per voter, the analysis concluded.

“Pennsylvania’s experience with private election grants should be evidence enough for lawmakers across the country to regulate their use and to view handouts from unvetted private organizations with healthy suspicion,” Broad + Liberty CEO Terry Tracy wrote in The Federalist.

“Americans deserve to have confidence that elections are being conducted fairly. Private election grants only reinforce the perception of systemic fraud and fan the flames of partisan division.”

The publication’s openrecords requests showed thenPennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and an aide to Gov. Tom Wolf inviting Democrats in places like Bucks County to apply for the grant — but Tracy said the requests didn’t produce equivalent e-mails to Republican-led counties.

The GOP-leaning counties were eventually told of the grants and did get money, but only after Zuckerberg’s huge donation came on Sept. 1, 2020 — weeks before the election.

Donations from Zuckerberg to the center and another group, the Center for Election Innovation and Research, were said to be aimed to help promote voter access amid an unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots due to pandemic restrictions and concerns in the days before any vaccines had been approved.

A Zuckerberg rep had previously told The Post that the funding came after an open call and that all jurisdictions that applied received funding.

“Nearly 2,500 election jurisdictions from 49 states applied for and received funds, including urban, suburban, rural and exurban counties,” the spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said.

Still, reports of the perceived inequity from “Zuck bucks” have led to calls in some states to ban private funding for election offices.

Pennsylvania went for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 before swinging red for Donald Trump in 2016. Joe Biden won the state in 2020.