Last year's Presidential Election saw a surge in mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and with that surge came an increase in associated costs.
Counties throughout the state turned to private funding to help with those costs, some from a private company, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), run by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
One Pennsylvania state lawmaker wants to change the election funding laws here in the commonwealth.
While the funding was open to every county, State Representative Eric Nelson, who represents the 57th Legislative District, explained to the KDKA Radio Morning Show that there was a significant disparity in the amounts awarded to counties that applied for the funding.
According to Nelson, 16 counties received private funding to support election operations.
He said Democrat counties received more grant money than Republican counties. He said "Philadelphia, Centre County, Chester County and Delaware - just between those, there's over $15 million." Nelson said that Mark Zuckerberg and the CTCL outspent funding from the federal and state governments. "That's a very dangerous precedent," said Nelson.
He said counties typically fund elections themselves and, if needed, supplemented by the federal and state governments.
A total of $37 million was donated to Pennsylvania by the Zuckerberg organization through two different charities.
Morning Show co-host Kevin Battle also pointed out that Zuckerberg apparently donated $250 million of his own money to support elections nationwide. Nelson said that Zuckerberg's wife also contributed another $100 million on top of that.
Nelson said, "Their strategy - they're extremely smart, very vicious - and it was, in my opinion, to hyper-extract votes from select counties within swing states."
Nelson said the disparity in these grants is sometimes $9 per voter in Democrat strongholds vs $0.75 a voter in Republican areas.
So, he's proposing a change to Pennsylvania election laws.
"We would be changing that process to prohibit the third party grant from happening directly with cities and counties and, if in the future, an organization wanted to contribute to the election, they could do so through the Department of State so that everything would be transparent," he explained.
He said that the Department of State would then distribute that money throughout the state equally, based on the eligible number of voters.
According to Nelson, the grants from Zuckerberg came with contracts and conditions, which he says sets a dangerous precedent for democracy.
