On April 2, Wisconsin voters will have the opportunity to kill the “Zuckerbucks,” which played an important role in the 2020 general election.
The ballot initiative known as Question 1 would create a constitutional amendment that would bar election officials from accepting private grants to fund their operations.
Meanwhile, Question 2 would also add a constitutional amendment requiring that “only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendum.”
Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill in 2021 that would have prevented private funds from being used in elections.
In his veto message, Evers said he objected to “restrictions on local governments potentially using supplemental funding for election administration,” adding that officials “must always run elections according to state and federal law,” so the source of the funding should not matter.
He vetoed the proposed change to the law again in 2022.
Evers previously vetoed the subject matter of Question 2 twice, according to Ballotpedia.
This Tuesday, vote YES on Questions 1 & 2. Keep Zuckerbucks out of our elections! pic.twitter.com/67kftwYhOs
— Wisconsin GOP (@WisGOP) March 28, 2024
On March 21, The Associated Press reported that the governor also nixed legislation that would have tightened the rules for casting and collecting absentee ballots in nursing homes and required a post-election audit.
Do you think “Zuckerbucks” should be illegal?
So the ballot initiatives Questions 1 and 2 were the Republican legislature’s way to take the issue of election integrity right to the voters.
Former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker offered some further background for the proposed changes to the Wisconsin constitution.
“Do you believe that elections in Wisconsin should be run by election officials and not by non-government organizations? If the answer is yes, you should vote yes on the two referendum questions on the ballot all across the state,” Walker wrote in a Thursday post on social media platform X.
“According to the Associated Press, in 2000, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $400 million to two nonprofit organizations to help various government election offices across the country,” he added, noting a bulk of their money went to The Center for Tech and Civic Life, which then distributed it.
Do you believe that elections in Wisconsin should be run by election officials and not by non-government organizations? If the answer is yes, you should vote yes on the two referendum questions on the ballot all across the state.
The first question prohibits the use of private… pic.twitter.com/xbtHAkMNfP
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 28, 2024
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that $10.6 million went to Wisconsin with the bulk of it, $8.8 million, going to the state’s five largest cities, which happen to be Democratic strongholds: Milwaukee, Green Bay, Madison, Racine and Kenosha.
“Democrats routinely do well in each of these urban areas,” Walker wrote. “In particular, they receive 80 percent or more of the vote in many of the wards in the City of Madison and the City of Milwaukee. Nonprofits helping increase turnout in these wards were actually increasing the turnout for Democrats.”
“This should not be legal whether Mark Zuckerberg funded it on the left or Charles Koch on the right. Elections should be run by government officials,” he said.
As an example, in 2020 Green Bay received a reported $1.2 million grant from The Center for Tech and Civic Life and Democratic operative Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein was named the “grant mentor” for the city.
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who the Wisconsin Assembly named as a special counsel to look into 2020 election issues, told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2022 that Spitzer-Rubenstein, a lawyer from Brooklyn, in effect ran the city of Green Bay’s election.
Then-Green Bay city clerk Kris Teske went on leave two weeks before the general election out of frustration with how Spitzer-Rubenstein was usurping her authority, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Democratic Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich “allowed staff who were not educated on election law to run the election, along with people who weren’t even City of Green Bay employees,” Teske wrote in an email in December 2020, according to the Journal.
Democrat Joe Biden carried Wisconsin by 20,682 votes over then-President Donald Trump, a margin of less than 1 percent.
Evers opposes Questions 1 and 2.
“The governor thinks it’s ridiculous Republicans are continuing to try and enact their radical agenda through constitutional amendments because they don’t have the votes to pass their divisive policies through the legislative process,” his communications director Britt Cudaback said, according to Semafor.
Chairman @RepBryanSteil: “27 states have banned Zuckerbucks. That’s a great step forward.”
Zuckerbucks distort Americans’ confidence in their elections. pic.twitter.com/snym6Euo4j
— House Admin. Committee GOP (@HouseAdmin) March 1, 2024
According to Republican U.S. House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, 27 states have voted so far to ban “Zuckerbucks.”
