The 2020 presidential election witnessed an unprecedented and coordinated public-private partnership to improperly influence the 2020 presidential election on behalf of one particular candidate and party. Funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other high-tech interests, activist organizations created a two-tiered election system that treated voters differently depending on whether they lived in Democrat or Republican strongholds.

Private monies dictated city and county election management contrary to both federal law and state election plans endorsed and developed by state legislatures with authority granted by the United States Constitution. Moreover, executive officials in swing states facilitated, through unique and novel contracts, the sharing of private and sensitive information about citizens within those states with private interests, some whom actively promote leftist candidates and agendas. This data sharing allowed direct access to data of unique political value to leftist causes, and created new vulnerabilities for digital manipulation of state electronic poll books and counting systems and machines. This public-private partnership in these swing states effectively placed government’s thumb on the scale to help these private interests achieve their objectives and to benefit the candidates of one political party.

The Amistad Project began monitoring these activities beginning in the spring of 2019, originally focusing on the digital vulnerabilities of state election systems. Amistad became aware that states and local election officials failed to maintain the legal right to access computer logs on the machines counting ballots.

The first step to engage any computer forensic examination is to gain access to machine logs, yet scores of election officials failed to maintain the right to even review such information, much less establish a method for bipartisan review. In effect, America purchased a complex ballot box (computer) into which its votes would be deposited, but didn’t have the right to open the box and review the count. As COVID escalated in March of 2020, The Amistad Project began witnessing troubling efforts to undermine the integrity of the 2020 by assaulting laws designed to protect the integrity of the absentee ballot.

The use of absentee ballots is uniquely vulnerable to fraud, as detailed in a special bipartisan congressional report authored by former President Jimmy Carter and James Baker. In-person voting occurs with trained election officials present. These officials deter voter intimidation and coercion and are trained to educate, not mislead, the voter when completing the ballot. Moreover, in-person voting allows for voter identification.

When the ballot leaves government controls, new challenges are present. There are few identity checks and no assurance the ballot was completed without intimidation, coercion, inducement, or by a person other than the voter. Accordingly, states have basic, common-sense laws protecting the integrity of the absentee, advance, or mailed ballot.

Beginning in the spring of 2020, left-leaning organizations filed a massive number of lawsuits to challenge these integrity laws. Lawsuits sought to set aside witness requirements, identification requirements, deadlines, delivery requirements, ballot deadlines, signature requirements, application requirements, and even argued that the Constitution required all returned ballot envelopes be postage prepaid due to COVID.

Swing state governors also started issuing emergency executive orders shutting down in-person voting while pouring new state resources into encouraging persons to vote in advance. Polling data revealed this coordinated assault on in-person voting generally favored Democrat Party voters who preferred to vote in advance, while placing Republicans, who preferred to vote in person, at a disadvantage. These actions represent the beginning of the formation of a two-tier election system favoring one demographic while disadvantaging another demographic.

Also in March 2020, David Plouffe, former campaign manager for President Barak Obama, published his book entitled A Citizen’s Guide to Defeating Donald Trump. At the time, Plouffe was working for the charitable initiative of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. On page 81 of his book, Plouffe correctly identifies that the 2020 general election will come down to a “block by block street fight” to turn out the vote in the urban core, a key stronghold of Democrat Party votes. Plouffe specifically highlighted high turnouts in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia as the key to a Democrat victory.

Soon after, we witnessed the rumblings of a previously sleepy 501(c)(3) organization entitled the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) whose previous annual revenues never exceeded $1.2 million. CTCL began sending agents into states to recruit certain Democrat strongholds to prepare grants requesting monies from CTCL. For example, CTCL inked a $100,000 grant to the Mayor of Racine, WI in May of 2020 directing the Mayor to recruit four other cities (Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, and Milwaukee) to develop a joint grant request of CTCL. This effort results in these cities submitting a “Wisconsin Safe Election Plan” on June 15, 2020 to CTCL and, in turn, receiving $6.3 million to implement the plan. This privatization of elections undermines the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires state election plans to be submitted to federal officials and approved and requires respect for equal protection by making all resources available equally to all voters.

The provision of Zuckerberg-CTCL funds allowed these Democrat strongholds to spend roughly $47 per voter, compared to $4 to $7 per voter in traditionally Republican areas of the state. Moreover, this recruiting of targeted jurisdictions for specific government action and funding runs contrary to legislative election plans and invites government to play favorites in the election process.

The “Wisconsin Safe Election Plan” was not authored by the state, and considered state election integrity laws as obstacles and nuisances to be ignored or circumvented. Moreover, CTCL retained the right, in the grant document, to, in its sole discretion, order all funds returned if the grantee cities did not conduct the election consistent with CTCL dictates. Effectively, CTCL managed the election in these five cities. And this plan violated state law in, at least, the following fashion:

1) The plan circumvented voter identification requirements for absentee ballots by attempting to classify all voters as “indefinitely confined” due to COVID and later, after Wisconsin Supreme Court criticism, by ordering election clerks to not question such claims.

2) The plan initiated the use of drop boxes for ballot collection, significantly breaching the chain of custody of the ballot and failing to maintain proper logs and reviews to ensure all properly cast ballots were counted and all improperly cast ballots were not counted.

3) Initiated the consolidation of counting centers, justifying the flow of hundreds of thousands of ballots to one location and the marginalization of Republican poll watchers such that bipartisan participation in the management, handling, and counting of the ballots was compromised.

These are but examples of radical changes in election processes that opened the door for significant fraud. The disparate impact of Zuckerberg funding is also present in the analysis of CTCL funding in Pennsylvania.

Documents obtained through court order revealed communication between the City of Philadelphia and CTCL emphasizing that CTCL paid election judges in Philadelphia and other election officials. CTCL mandated Philadelphia to increase its polling locations and to use drop boxes and eventually mobile pick-up units.

Moreover, Zuckerberg monies allowed Philadelphia to “cure” absentee ballots in a manner not provided for in Republican areas of the state. In Democrat Delaware County, Pennsylvania, one drop box was placed every four square miles and for every 4,000 voters. In the 59 counties carried by Trump in 2016, there was one drop box for every 1,100 square miles and every 72,000 voters.

Government encouraging a targeted demographic to turn out the vote is the opposite side of the same coin as government targeting a demographic to suppress the vote. This two-tiered election system allowed voters in Democrat strongholds to stroll down the street to vote while voters in Republican strongholds had to go on the equivalent of a “where’s Waldo” hunt. These irregularities existed wherever Zuckerberg’s money was granted to local election officials. In effect, Mark Zuckerberg was invited into the counting room, and the American people were kicked out.

Additionally, Amistad became alarmed at the new vulnerabilities created in our election system with “data sharing agreements” that gave left￾leaning third-party organizations front door access to electronic poll books.

Rock the Vote and other organizations inked agreements with blue state election officials to enter new registrations into state poll books. Such agreements are unprecedented and unwise. Previously, voter registrations were entered solely by election clerks, who have three important checks on their authority. These checks are:

1) they must be transparent subject to FOIA and open records laws;

2) they are geographically limited rendering audits manageable; and

3) they are politically accountable. No such checks apply to Rock the Vote. Allowing such access creates new digital vulnerabilities easily allowing nefarious actors to access poll books and alter entries.

The Amistad Project’s concerns were amplified by the nature of a contract offered by Michigan’s health director to a subsidiary of NGP VAN, a Democrat fundraiser and data services company.

Michigan granted the COVID tracing contract to Michigan VAN as a subsidiary of NGP VAN. The contract allowed this leftist organization to demand sensitive information from Michigan citizens at the threat of arrest. Citizens could be ordered to turn over medical records, travel information, the names of associates and friends, and other information with a significant privacy interest and of significant monetary value to a political fundraiser.

Emails later obtained through FOIA requests demonstrate Governor Whitmer’s political director was involved in suggesting to the health department that they not directly contract with NGP VAN because of possible political fallout.

Governor Whitmer’s staffer recommended NGP VAN create a Michigan subsidiary and that the subsidiary become a subcontractor so as to conceal NGP VAN’s involvement. When this information became public, Whitmer claimed she was unaware of the agreement and faced with public pressure, she rescinded the contract.

At this time, The Amistad Project decided to retain the services of Stillwater and Mr. Carlson to develop this report. Stillwater has and will continue to play a critical role in The Amistad Project’s understanding of the privatization of the 2020 election. Stillwater has engaged in extensive research of law, procedures, city documents, and public documents to reveal the workings of these private interests directing the 2020 election.

This report reveals those relationships and the method in which public officials partnered with private interests to improperly influence the 2020 election. Managing elections is a core government function that cannot be trusted to private interests. We must not privatize our elections. Such privatization threatens democracy, silences the voice of the electorate, and undermines election integrity.

These concerns should transcend party affiliation and this threat requires a bipartisan response. We will continue to expose these issues so our nation may adequately respond to this threat to the election process. — Phill Kline, Director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society

AUTHORS PREFACE

Using the COVID-19 flu pandemic as justification and the excuse that local elections lacked funding to facilitate safe elections, a well-funded network of foundations and non-profit organizations gave hundreds of millions of dollars of private funding directly to counties and municipalities across Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania for electoral purposes.

The illegitimate infusion of private funding and third-party promotion of training, equipment, security, staffing and reporting programs by a network of private nonprofits at the local level bypassed state administrative processes, violated legislative prerogatives codified in state Help America Vote Plans (HAVA), and resulted in questions about the integrity of the US electoral system.

This report places in context and raises substantive questions about last minute gifting of private funding by five progressive, non-profit foundations and ten non-profit organizations into the local elections of swing states. We begin by documenting longstanding federal and state authorities through which elections are to be funded and administered, factually demonstrating the adequacy and availability of public funding for the 2020 general election. Because the availability of adequate public funding severely contrasted the narrative by the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) that private monies were needed for safe administration of public elections, we explored the background of CTCL and discovered a deep and integrated apparatus of progressive foundations and affiliated non-profits whose mission is to transition the bottom-up, electoral system of the United States to a top down, electronic system that centralizes voter information, interfaces with state registration databases, and promotes advocacy, all of which could, over time, have the capacity to exert strong local influence on the electoral processes of the United States.

It is not difficult for even the most casual of observers to conclude that the presence of private funding in public elections simply is not a good idea. In fact, the use of public/private partnerships for elections is neither wise nor legal, and if allowed to continue unchecked will create a dependency of local governments on funding from a select group of people who can afford to promote their own causes.

Our particular concern lies not with the influence of foundations and their cooperating non-profits, but instead with the elected officials who accessed the funding and Secretaries of State who understood – even enabled – the influence of non-profits to take place within their states. We leave it to the readers of this report and those in authority to investigate our findings, buttress the existing electoral system, or take the necessary actions to ensure electoral processes are truly safe and secure.