North Carolina Senate Passes ‘Zuck Bucks’ Bill That Bars Private Donations to Local Election Boards
December 8, 2021 | North Carolina
The North Carolina Senate approved a bill that seeks to ban private funding for state and county election boards.
The push for Senate Bill 725, which bars the use of so-called Zuck Bucks, originated from what some have described as a record amount of private funds flooding into the 2020 election. If the measure isn’t signed or vetoed after 10 days of reaching Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk, it becomes law.
Among those private organizations donating funds to local election boards was the Chicago nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).
Before the 2020 election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $350 million to CTCL to fund local election boards throughout the United States, for the stated purpose of creating a voting environment that reduced the spread of the coronavirus.
According to the Capital Research Center, Martin Oakes, a former Lincoln County commissioner in North Carolina, traced up to $5.4 million of CTCL’s “Zuck Bucks” to North Carolina, which included a $1 million grant to the state board of elections.
