Mark Zuckerberg and his spouse are donating an extra $100 million to assist election directors.
San Francisco, United States:
Fb founder Mark Zuckerberg mentioned Tuesday he and his spouse are donating an extra $100 million to assist native election directors, whereas brushing apart accusations of partisan motives.
The brand new donation is on prime of $300 million Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged final month and can pay for infrastructure together with voting tools, PPE for ballot staff and extra polling employees, the entrepreneur mentioned in a Fb publish.
“Between Covid and inadequate public funding for elections, there are unprecedented challenges for election officers working to verify everybody can vote safely this yr,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg mentioned the extra funds had been being added attributable to “a far larger response than we anticipated” from election officers in this system being administered by the nonprofit Middle for Tech and Civic Life.
“To this point, greater than 2,100 native election jurisdictions have submitted purposes to CTCL for assist,” he mentioned.
Zuckerberg, with a private web price estimated at some $90 billion, mentioned there had been “a number of lawsuits filed” searching for to dam the donation “based mostly on claims that the organizations receiving donations have a partisan agenda. That is false.”
He mentioned the funds “are being allotted by non-partisan organizations” from city and rural jurisdictions across the nation, with many from districts with fewer than 25,000 registered voters.
“To be clear, I agree with those that say that authorities ought to have offered these funds, not non-public residents,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“I hope that for future elections the federal government gives enough funding. However absent that funding, I believe it’s vital that this pressing want is met.”
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