Kentucky could lose out on millions of dollars to fund elections if this bill is passed
The title of House Bill 301 is clever, former Republican Secretary of State and Legislative Agent for the Kentucky County Clerks Association Trey Grayson said:
“Stop Outside Influence Over Elections Act of 2022.”
“One legislator said to me, ‘how can I be against the bill that says we’ll stop outside influence on our elections?’ ...that’s a really compelling title,” Grayson said.
Despite the appealing name, Grayson argues the bill banning any non-state funds from use in Kentucky elections makes the tough work of administering elections even harder.
In 2020, nonprofits backed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan awarded hundreds of millions of dollars to states and counties that administer elections. That included at least $7.1 million to Kentucky county clerks and $1.6 million to the State Board of Elections, according to Bryan Sunderland, once a high-level staffer in former governor Matt Bevin’s administration who’s now a lobbyist and member of the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees.
Sunderland said the money “casts a cloud” over Kentucky elections, as the most recent round was awarded by an organization backed by a left-leaning billionaire. Banning such contributions, he said, would safeguard against any such private interest from either side of the aisle.
“You don’t want people looking at an election and questioning where someone’s private money went and how the election was run,” Sunderland said. “This should not be a partisan issue. Republicans may fear Mark Zuckerberg or George Soros, but the Democrats don’t want to see Charles Koch or Donald Trump putting money into election offices either. They should be impartially run without the stain of private dollars.”
Sunderland, along with sponsor Rep. Patrick Flannery, R-Olive Hill, highlighted that of the $7.1 million sent to counties by one nonprofit, eight received $5.5 million. He mentioned that Jefferson County, the largest county in Kentucky, received $1.8 million and Franklin County received about half a million.
The “worst” parts of the original bill included penalties and disclosure requirements related to communications with the federal government about elections, according to detractors. Those were removed in a committee substitute last week.
Though the Kentucky County Clerk’s Association is officially neutral on the bill as amended, both Grayson and Anderson County Clerk Jason Denny have issues with the ban. It passed out of Committee on Elections, Constitutional Amendments & Intergovernmental Affairs 13-3 in a Republican party line vote.
A spokesperson for Secretary of State Michael Adams’ office said they had reservations about the originally drafted bill, but now support it with the latest amendment.
The State Board of Elections did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Opposition to the bill
Denny, a Republican in Central Kentucky’s deep red Anderson County, said that the $10,000 his office received from the Zuckerberg-backed Center for Tech and Civic Life was much-needed and led to the highest turnout of any county in the state.
“In a perfect world, elections would be fully funded. They have not been,” Denny said. “During 2020, we saw a different style of an election… We as county clerks were able to work through this and pull off a nearly perfect election — one of the smoothest run elections that Kentucky’s ever seen.”
In Anderson County, that money meant being able to make signs describing the location of voting centers and a video showing where those centers were.
Grayson made the argument that if the legislature wanted to prevent outside entities from playing favorites, then they could go the way of Georgia. The Peach State, Grayson and Denny said, mandates that grants and donations for election administration go through the state election board and then the money is distributed proportionally throughout the state.
A handful of Republicans voted in favor of House Bill 301 out of committee but said they also would be comfortable with a Georgia-like model.
Grayson pointed out that a strict ban on outside funds would have prevented his office, when he was the top state election official, from taking a grant to improve voting access for overseas military voters. He said such a ban was overkill, leaving potential dollars on the table for election administration — and, the influx of money may have been unique to the demands of an election held during an historic spike in COVID-19 cases.
Last year, the State Board of Elections (SBE) received about $1.6 million from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, another Zuckerberg-funded organization; Grayson is a member of the board. In Fiscal Year 2021, when the 2020 election was held, the SBE received over $35 million, most of it in federal funds.
Sunderland didn’t point out that sum as cause for concern as much as he did the county-specific grants, but still opposed it.
Denny’s plea for a model like Georgia’s incorporated some uncertainty about future funding for offices like his.
“I know we’ve got money now from the federal government, but that money is not always going to be there,” Denny said. “Will there be funding year after year after year for county boards of elections and counties to keep up the cost of elections? The money’s not there.
“We’re almost desperate to fund elections in our counties.”
Argument for a blanket ban
Sunderland emphasized two points in favor of disallowing any outside funds to help elections: perception and potential future threats.
Several legislators in committee agreed with Sunderland that voter perception of outside funds being used for elections is an issue.
Sunderland cited a poll from the right-leaning Center for Excellence in Polling that says 78% of Kentuckians are against “allowing government offices that oversee elections to accept funding from private individuals and special interest groups.”
Rep. Jerry Miller, R-Eastwood, said he’d support a Georgia model, but pointed out that election integrity — which he indicated this bill would improve in the public’s eye — is a huge issue among voters.
“There is just so much distrust right now in elections,” Miller said. “I get emails, it seems like every day, questioning the integrity of our elections.”
Sunderland said that the Georgia model would be palatable, but is not ideal because voters would prefer their elections not financed by such “special interests” regardless of how it’s regulated.
“I would submit you cannot eliminate the cloud of doubt when partisan, special interest money flows into an election,” Sunderland said. “Frankly, we need more people to have trust in the elections in this country.”
