During the last election cycle, two monopolistic Big Tech companies, Facebook and Google, coordinated their political efforts by dumping 1.3 million dollars in funds into 30 Montana counties. Establishing the so-called, “Center for Tech and Civil Life,” the donations were disguised as an offering for personal protective equipment (PPE). But in reality, the funds were designated to harvest ballots from traditional Democratic strongholds.
Here in Montana, according the Secretary of State’s Office, 30 of our counties
received those funds, which total at least $1.3 million in funds. No significant amount of funds were given to conservative districts or in conservative districts that didn’t have liberal opposition in the general election. Almost all of that $1.3 million dollars was given to counties that traditionally vote left-of-center or – at the very least – have rough-and-tumble election battles between Republicans and Democrats.
For example, Cascade County received $294,000. Glacier County received $263,000. Lewis and Clark County received $215,000. Gallatin County also received a comparable sum, which they used to park a “mobile office” at the university to harvest ballots from the college students.
SB335 was designed to stop election interference from Google and Facebook or – for that matter – any group that wants to engage in ballot-harvesting as a third-party to our state’s electorate. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Gordon Vance (SD34) – available here – would have forbade counties from taking money by third parties to fund the election process, considering that funding elections is the sole responsibility of the government and not private individuals or private corporations.
As most have pointed out, counties receiving such grants from Big Tech (or special interests) are being utilized only in places that need to drive out and drive up the Democratic vote. Republicans counties have been grossly overlooked by such measures, demonstrating that the funds aren’t given by “Good Samaritans” who just want our county clerks to have a little more money to play with to do their job, but are designed to push out Democrat votes from college students, the transient, and other low-likely voters who tend to vote liberally.
Republicans who voted against this bill to sure up the integrity of our elections include Butch Gillespie, Mike Lang, Brad Molnar, Jason Small, and Russ Tempel. They crossed over with the Democrat colleagues to vote in support of Big Tech and against the election integrity of their constituents.
Not only is Big Tech doing their best to prevent fair elections by censoring Montanans who have a conservative point of view, they are injecting liberal counties (and counties with conservatives running who they think can be beat) with cash in order to harvest ballots from low-information and low-involvement voters.
It appears that these “Republicans” are just fine with a million dollars being spurged to get Democrats elected in the Big Sky State.
[…] the Montana Daily Gazette revealed that Facebook and Google had spent 1.3 million dollars harvesting ballots in the state’s blue districts. Claiming the funds would be spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) for election staff, the […]