Group: Trump wrong on election aid

Says donations from Zuckerberg were OK

Ohio's bipartisan election officials organization shot down a favorite critique by former President Donald Trump of the 2020 election as part of a response Sunday to a pair of congressional committees probing voting disinformation in four states.

Multiple times – including during an April rally at the Delaware County fairgrounds – the former president has insisted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg shouldn't have been allowed to donate millions to bolster elections systems in areas struggling to find resources to oversee the November 2020 vote. In October, Trump called the aid “criminal.”

Because of such concerns, a GOP provision in last year's state budget bill banned those types of public-private partnerships in future Ohio elections. Gov. Mike Dewine signed the measure, versions of which more than a dozen other states have passed.

Trump, along with many Republican supporters, claims that the Zuckerberg aid was tilted heavily toward Democratic areas, and thus took its place beside his false claims about fraud that resulted in the 2020 election being stolen from him.

Ohio's GOP Senate nominee, J.D. Vance, asserted in an October op-ed he co-wrote in the New York Post that Zuckerberg's money was used to “buy

the presidency for Joe Biden.”

But Brian Sleeth, Warren County elections director since 2009 who currently is president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said such claims don’t hold water in the Buckeye State.

“While we are aware that 66 county boards of elections accepted grant money in the 2020 election cycle, acceptance of the grants was affirmed by the local bipartisan boards of elections. Therefore, it is hard to conceive that the grants were accepted to gain undue partisan advantage or tilt election outcomes towards one party or the other,” he said in a four-page letter to leaders of the U.S. House Administration Committee and the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Franklin County; carried by Joe Biden, received about $980,000, which was used for advertising, early voting poll locations, additional cleaning materials and related items. Licking County, carried by Trump, used about $77,000 for new electronic poll books that elections workers used to check in voters at the polls, Politifact found.

Zuckerberg, CEO of what’s now called Meta, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated more than $350 million through a Chicago nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to help local elections officials get through a general election amid a pandemic and record absentee voting, after federal officials declined to allocate additional funds.

Aaron Ockerman, longtime executive director of the nonprofit association, said Zuckerberg did not specify exactly how the money could be spent.

“One of the appealing things about the grants was how little strings were attached. Basically, local boards of elections had discretion to spend the money to help get them through the election,” Ockerman said.

Separately, Secretary of State Frank Larose accepted more than $1 million from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a Washington D.C. nonprofit that received about $70 million in what are now widely dubbed by critics as “Zuckerbucks.”

Zuckerberg announced last month that no future election grants would be forthcoming.

Sleeth said he was unable to respond to several of the committees’ questions because his organization did not compile information on such things as threats on election workers or individual examples of election misinformation.

The April 20 congressional inquiry sought information “relating to your organization’s efforts to counter lies and conspiracy theories and protect the integrity of federal elections in your state.” It was signed by U.S. Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Zoe Lofgren, D-california, chairperson of the Committee on House Administration, with copies to the top GOP members.

“Ohio has taken several steps that restrict Americans’ right to vote in upcoming elections and to have their votes counted fairly and accurately,” the letter said.

Specifically citing the Ohio ban approved in House Bill 110, the state budget, the missive added that “The committees are particularly concerned by reports over the past year that some state officials have relied on false, debunked election conspiracy theories to enact new laws and take other steps that could undermine future elections.”

Letters also were sent to Arizona, Florida and Texas.

Sleeth, a Democrat whose response was guided by the association’s legal counsel and executive director, noted the group itself got a $25,000 grant in 2020 from the Chicago group that administered the Zuckerberg money.

Most of that aid was used to fund Ohioballotfacts.org, which helped to shoot down election disinformation. The major examples:

The ineligible voter

MYTH: Probably the most-popular and persistent of myths, this one claims thousands of ballots are illegally cast by individuals who are either not U.S. citizens or not residents of Ohio.

FACT: Registration applications are compared against both the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security Administration database to confirm residency and citizenship.

The ballot dump

MYTH: Almost as popular as the ineligible voter, the ballot dump has taken on a sort of urban legend status. It claims that someone knows someone who knows someone who saw a bunch of ballots in a trash bin.

FACT: Though not in Ohio, there have been in fact a handful of reports of ballots being found in the trash. Typically, the FBI investigates these matters and provides few details about ongoing investigations. However, anyone who votes absentee can track the progress of that ballot at the www.voteohio.gov/track.

The snowbird

MYTH: This myth involves thousands of Ohioans who migrate south for the winter. The myth goes that they cast a ballot in Ohio and then cast another in the state where they will spend the winter.

FACT: Currently there are two datasharing collectives that help county boards double-check voting records across state boundaries. The Election Registration Information Center and the State and Territorial Exchange of Vital Events. Currently not all U.S. states and territories take part, although Ohio does participate along with Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, the most-common snowbird destinations.

The Russian hacker

MYTH: This one has the Russian government itself or a rogue operator in one of their former states hacking into a series of voting machines and selecting its preferred candidate.

FACTS: Ohio elections law forbids all voting and tabulating machines from being connected to the internet. drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland