GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – On Thursday, the City of Green Bay accepted funding from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to improve elections and election safety. But there are still a lot of questions over the last piece of the grants, which is intended for voter outreach.
Some city leaders raised questions over how the money, and resources, would be distributed for voters in the city.
“The money that we used so far was for equipment and personal protective equipment for people from the virus, general outreach by the city on how to vote, where to vote, and vote early,” said Alderman Chris Wery. “This last part, the $150,000, was to hire a firm to do outreach. I think the questions circulated around – what kind of outreach? Who were they going to outreach? And I don’t know if we got great answers to that.”
Wery says despite the approval of the funding, there is still apprehension about how equitably it will be distributed to constituents across the city.
There are a lot of questions swirling over the source of the money – Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg provided the Center for Tech and Civic Life over a quarter-billion dollars to help with election safety and informing voters. Wery points out that they don’t know much about the group, other than knowing they tend to be big into utilizing analytics and data, and that’s concerning.
“I was in favor, they had some things in their proposal and such as just direct mail going to every address. That way, everybody’s getting it. But it looks like the group that’s providing the money is very keen on analytics in social media…That right there cuts out a fair swath of people. I think maybe older maybe, people don’t get into social media, it cuts them out. So there were some questions about how is going to be used,” Wery told WTAQ News. “Using it for equipment or information that goes out to everyone, everybody generally, is great. But when you start using analytics to dive down and only reach certain people, that’s when it raises a red flag.”
The other point of contention for Wery and some others is the potential political emphasis in the distribution of information.
“It’s a left leaning organization and they’re only targeting certain cities in certain states. So that raises the question right there – why those states? Why those cities? If a big conservative group were giving us money to ensure voter safety, it would probably raise flags on the other side as well,” Wery said. “It does raise questions with people who talk to me, that if we have the mayor – who’s really coming up pretty strongly for one side or the other – in charge of messaging, they’re uncertain about how the money is going to be used.”
Wery added that Zuckerberg himself reportedly said the money was intended for use by counties, not cities.
“Not all of Brown County is using this money. Perhaps it should’ve went to Brown County so that Howard and Ashwaubenon and Hobart could target voters too to get out and vote. So it was just strange how it came about,” Wery said.
Meanwhile, the actual use of the money could become a hot button issue as well. A conservative group is reportedly seeking to block the funding.
The Wisconsin Voters Alliance argues that the grants are bribery to drive up voter turnout in Democratic areas. They also claim the grants violate federal law that only states, not cities, can decide how to implement federal election law. Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha, and Racine have also received significant grant funding from the Center for Tech and Civic Life ahead of the November 3rd election.
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