Keystone Today

Pennsylvania election officials will be prohibited from accepting private money to underwrite the cost of managing elections under legislation cleared by the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee this week. 

“The lure of private money has seeped into our election system and it must be stopped,” state Rep. Eric Nelson (R-Westmoreland), one of the prime sponsors of the bill, said in a statement. “Email evidence has proven our state’s highest offices are vulnerable to perversion by deep pockets with private election contracts. It is just plain wrong, and this bill will stop it.”

The legislation, House Bill 2044, specifies that no private money can be used for “operating elections, employing staff, equipping polling places or engaging in voter outreach.”

Nelson, and the other sponsors of the bill, Rep. Clint Owlett (R-Tioga) and Rep. Jim Struzzi (R-Indiana), cited the influence that a nonprofit group, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), had in Democratic counties leading up to the 2020 general election.

They pointed out that Philadelphia County received nearly $9 per registered voter from CTCL while several other counties received less than $2 per registered voter. Certain counties also were made aware of the funding opportunity before others, they said.

“Philadelphia’s $10 million grant and Delaware County’s $2.2 million grant were awarded nearly two weeks before the funding opportunity was even made available to all county election offices,” Owlett said in a statement. “It’s fundamentally wrong to allow outside interests to have any say in how our commonwealth – or any state – administers elections for their citizens. And this bill would make sure it never happens again.”

CTCL received more than $400 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to grant money to election officials, the bulk of which went to Democratic areas, in battleground states in what an investigation shows was a get-out-the vote campaign for the Democratic Party.

The group, and another beneficiary of the money the Center for Election Innovation & Research, are staffed by former Democratic operatives and progressive activists, an analysis by the Capital Research Center showed.

Election officials were also banned from accepting private funds in legislation, House Bill 1300, passed by the General Assembly in June. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, vetoed the legislation.