North Nevada News

White Pine County, Nevada has applied for and received a $20,000 grant from the Chicago-based "Zuckerbucks" non-profit that spent $400 million in 2020 staffing county election offices with Democrat staffers.

That's according to the county's response to a Freedom of Information request by the Silver State Times.

Emails show that White Pine County Clerk Nichole Stephey applied for a grant from The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) on Aug. 8. 

"CTCL is a team of civic technologists, trainers, researchers, election administration and data experts working to foster a more informed and engaged democracy, and helping to modernize U.S. elections," according to its website.

Stephey received a response within hours from CTCL founder and executive director Tiana Epps-Johnson.

"I'm pleased to share that the Center for Tech and Civic Life has reviewed your application for CTCL’s nonpartisan 2024 Rural and Nonmetro Election Infrastructure Grant Program 24A-97187 and has approved a grant award totaling $20,000," she wrote in an email.

The Silver State Times sent a FOIA Request to White Pine County asking for copies of "all email correspondence with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, including all emails from the domain @techandciviclife.org, and any applications filed for grant funding with the Center for Tech and Civic Life."

Applications for grants with CTCL opened on Aug. 2 and were available to eligible election offices in 19 states—Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming—as well as the U.S. territories.

White Pine County's population in 2020 was 9,481, according to U.S. Census data.

The White Pine County Board of Commissioners includes Laurie L. Carson, Janet VanCamp, Paula Carson, Shane Bybee, and Hank Vogler.

Republican Donald J. Trump defeated Democrat Joe Biden in White Pine County in 2020, winning 3,255 votes (64.9 percent) to Biden's 1,676 votes (33.8 percent), with 88 voters (1.8 percent) choosing candidates from other parties.

Statewide in Nevada in 2020, Biden received 703,486 votes (50.06 percent) to Trump's 659,890 (47.67 percent). Biden won by a margin of about 33,596 votes.

CTCL "skewed voter turnout in the 2020 election and may have tipped the presidential election to Joe Biden."

After Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave CTCL $400 million in 2020 to discreetly distribute to willing county election offices, 28 state legislatures banned the practice of taking partisan non-profit funding to run elections.

Zuckerberg's “roughly $400 million in (2020) grants (were) directed almost exclusively to Democrat-leaning districts to fund various election efforts and equipment, perhaps most notably the funding of ballot drop-boxes," according to City Journal.

"Many states subsequently passed laws to ban the private funding of election administration," the City Journal reported.