Pennsylvania Governor Signs Compromise Bill Banning Outside Election Funding

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (D) this week signed legislation banning nongovernmental entities from issuing grants for election administration and also creating a state-run grant program to meet such administrative needs. 

State Senators Lisa Baker (R-Dallas) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-Jacobus) sponsored the measure in response to revelations that left-leaning nonprofits like the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) bestowed large sums of money on localities across the nation in 2020. (Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, contributed $350 million to the organization that year.) Most CTCL grants going to Pennsylvania counties subsidized election administration in Democrat-heavy areas. 

Investigations by the Philadelphia-based journal Broad + Liberty in 2021 revealed that the offices of Gov. Wolf (D) and former Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D) helped facilitate CTCL grant applications from a number of Democrat-run counties in the summer of 2020. That was several weeks before counties across the commonwealth were invited to apply for CTCL funds. Republicans reacted with concern about whether CTCL was acting in a partisan fashion.

“Voting is among our basic rights, and the responsibility for properly running and funding elections is vested in government,” Baker and Phillips-Hill said in a joint statement. “No matter who on the outside is contributing, no matter their expressed motivations, millions of dollars coming in from national figures or organizations naturally raises suspicions of hidden agendas.”.. (Excerpt from The Pennsylvania Daily Star)