Out of luck on ‘Zuckerbucks,’ election officials’ pluck in trying to buck funding issues relies on Congress to get unstuck

By Chris Teale

In the wake of the 2020 election, more than two dozen states banned or regulated the use of private or philanthropic funding to help pay for election administration.

The states that did so argued that the bans were necessary to protect election integrity and ensure that only public funds were being used. Given the extra expense of administering elections during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Tech and Civic Life had stepped in with grants, backed by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

Those grants, which ranged from a few thousand dollars to millions of dollars, were quickly denigrated as “Zuckerbucks” by some. But a recent report from the Institute for Responsive Government, an advocacy organization, highlighted how their outlawing has left gaping holes in states’ budgets, with many lawmakers unwilling or unable to fill them. 

The pandemic forced states to spend more to send out more mail-in ballots and count them, as well as cover other expenses like sanitizing polling places and equipment to prevent the spread of infection. 

Since then, election administrators say their jobs have become more complex as they must manage IT, cybersecurity, communications, and other tasks that were previously outside their domain. Aging equipment and inadequate staffing are just two of the factors that leave elections offices hamstrung by a lack of financing.

The institute found that the first 11 states that passed bans on accepting private funds for election administration in 2021 did not offer their local governments any increased funding to make up the shortfall.

Based on researchers’ reviews of state budget and expenditure data across fiscal years 2022 and 2023, Georgia and Indiana do not appear to provide any ongoing support to local elections administrators, and while they may provide one-off funding, it is not consistent. Another five – Florida, Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio and Tennessee – only reimburse some expenses for certain elections, mostly presidential primaries and special elections. 

The remaining four states – Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho and Texas – provide some state funding but have not increased it since their bans on private funds.

“It's so deeply counterproductive to the goals that those same legislators who made those bans are trying to achieve,” said Sam Oliker-Friedland, the Institute for Responsive Government’s executive director. “If they want a secure election system, starving these local officials of funding is not the way to do that. We are hearing a lot about how badly they want ballots to be counted quickly … The way to fix that is money for staff, equipment and real estate. That's the trifecta of how you count ballots quicker.”

It is not all doom and gloom, however. Pennsylvania also banned private funds for elections, but in 2022 it budgeted $45 million for counties in new funds. “It was a great example of where that requirement to compromise is really helpful,” said Oliker-Friedland, given the narrow partisan split in the state legislature.

And the report said that states investing in new or upgraded equipment can make a difference, especially for cash-strapped jurisdictions. In 2020, Georgia authorized using up to $150 million in bond balances to replace their election machines statewide, while in 2019 the Ohio General Assembly approved over $100 million in bonds to buy voting machines for its counties.

“These state investments can help local governments avoid large, locally funded capital improvement projects and help ensure access to safe and reliable equipment throughout a state,” the report says. “They do not, however, address the ongoing operational costs associated with administering elections.”

Federal funding for elections is once again up for debate in Congress as both chambers go through the appropriations process. The primary vehicle for federal funding is grant-making under the Help America Vote Act, but there is disagreement between House and Senate lawmakers on how much to spend. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill this month that includes $75 million for HAVA election security grants, which represents an increase of $20 million over FY 2024.

House legislators, meanwhile, went in a different direction in June and rejected the request for HAVA grants. They also drastically cut funding for the Elections Assistance Commission. Given the spending elsewhere, Tara Veazey, the report’s author, said the tens of millions on election grants represent “rounding errors.”

“This expense that’s central to our democracy is being borne by local taxpayers in wildly different localities across the country with different tax bases, with different local leaders, with different other demands on their budgets,” she said. “But they all need to meet this basic need of providing fair and adequate elections.”

Even the Senate’s spending is far below what some people want. The Election Infrastructure Initiative, which is backed by the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, estimates that $20 billion in federal investment over 10 years would fully modernize this part of the nation’s infrastructure and keep it safe and secure.

“What we’re seeing out of Congress is not thinking about exactly how they are running federal elections,” Oliker-Friedland said. “This isn’t the same as a grant to help your local firefighters fight local fires effectively. These are local officials who are being given an unfunded mandate by the federal government to run their elections.”

Chris Teale is a staff reporter for Route Fifty, where this story first appeared.