QUOTE: Gov. Ron DeSantis reaffirmed Florida's commitment to election integrity and keeping Big Tech from meddling in state and local voting affairs on Tuesday.
One of the biggest reasons DeSantis said he has confidence in his state's elections is because of recent election integrity legislation that prohibits meddling by Silicon Valley moguls such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. "We banned Zuckerbucks," the Republican said in a press conference on Tuesday.
A new report from The Federalist shows that Facebook CEO funneled $419.5 million with strings attached through The Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) to select U.S. elections offices before the 2020 election. These "Zuck Bucks" were largely awarded based on partisanship to local and state offices, and demanded the promotion of universal mail-in voting, greater opportunities for "ballot curing," and other vulnerable election tactics.
"So Zuckerberg, he spent over $400 million through these, quote, non-profits to, quote, help with election administration but what they would do is they would require certain things to be done like mass mail balloting, ballot harvesting, and they would focus on partisan voter turnout, basically. That was totally unacceptable," the governor said.