Thanks to recent elections, voters have become more and more concerned with election integrity. In fact, in Wisconsin, voters just passed two bills, making it harder for outside sources such as Mark Zuckerberg to interfere in state elections.
As The New York Times reported, the measures were passed during Tuesday’s primary elections in the state. The new amendment, which is two-fold, bans any private funding of elections or election infrastructure. As of Wednesday morning tallies, the measure had passed with a nine-point lead.
Goodbye, Zuckerbucks!
Wisconsin has voted YES on Questions 1 & 2.
Our Statement: https://t.co/Y5ROSqyjLZ pic.twitter.com/fSLWaOvwwG
— Wisconsin GOP (@WisGOP) April 3, 2024
The outlet reported that this change to election laws in the state is “part of a national backlash to donations that Marck Zuckerberg made to election offices in 2020.”
If you weren’t aware, “Zuckerbucks” became a concern in 2020 when groups founded by the Meta CEO put millions of dollars into swing state elections. Granted, the groups never moved to support one candidate over another. Instead, they simply began to change how elections were conducted.
For instance, as former Brown County, Wisconsin, clerk Sandy Juno recalled, a Zuckerberg-backed group called Center for Tech and Civic Life not only put forth huge amounts of money but then basically took over the election, “sidelining career experts and making last minute changes that may have violated state law.”
Eventually, the change allowed Green Bay’s mayor and chief of staff to preside over nearly all election processes, rather than the clerks and Wisconsin Elections Commission.
And this didn’t just happen in the larger Green Bay area. It happened all over the state and the nation.
As Just the News reported, by the end of the 2020 campaign, Zuckerberg’s groups had “poured millions of dollars into multiple key Wisconsin Democratic strongholds in the months leading up to” the 2020s election.
Nationwide, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, funneled more than a third of a billion dollars into elections.
Naturally, this heavily disintegrated our election integrity.
And that’s precisely why Wisconsin voters just made the effort to ensure such never happens in their state again.
As CEO of conservative public policy group MacIver Impact, Annette Olson, says, “What happened during the 2020 election should never be allowed to happen again in Wisconsin. That means permanently ending organizations with outside interests from having a role in the administration of our elections.”
Now, of course, this isn’t the first time Republicans in the state have attempted to move against Zuckerbucks and any other similar group methods. However, thanks to Democratic Governor Tony Evers, all such efforts have failed.
In fact, legislation has been created for not one but both parts of this new law in recent years. But Evers vetoed both twice.
Thankfully, the people have officially spoken.
Now, this may not seem like much of a change. After all, it’s just one state. But we have to remember that Wisconsin is not only a key swing state, but also the closest in regards to current polling.
According to RealClearPolling, Trump leads Biden in the state by a mere 0.6 percent.
So, the change, though small, could have a significant impact on the state. Now, we just pray that similar measures are passed in other states. Maybe then election integrity and confidence can be regained.
