Silver State Times

Douglas County, Nevada has applied for and received a $50,000 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 Douglas County Grants Administrator Debbie Swickard applied for a grant from The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) on Aug. 19. 

"As a rural County with limited funding a grant award will help us fill the gaps to purchase needed items for security. Being pro-active to mitigate any possible threat we would like to purchase transport carts for mail ballots and bullet proof glass for our election public counter," Swickard wrote in her grant request. "We are also in need for tables and shelving systems for our processing facility as well as tables for our vote centers. We are extremely grateful for any funding to help us maintain fair and safe elections for Douglas County."

Swickard 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‐47789 and has approved a grant award totaling $50,000," she wrote in an email.

"Hello Tiana, This is wonderful!!" Swickard responded, adding that acceptance of the grant needed to be approved by the Douglas County Board of Commissioners.

The CTCL Agreement states that "the grant funds must be used exclusively for the public purpose of planning and operationalizing reliable and secure election administration in Douglas County, Nevada in 2024."

The Silver State Times sent a FOIA Request to Douglas 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.

Douglas County's population in 2020 was 48,144, according to U.S. Census data. Its largest city and county seat is Minden, population 3,001.

Republican Donald J. Trump defeated Democrat Joe Biden in Douglass County in 2020, winning 27,206 votes (60.2 percent) to Biden's 17,065 votes (37.7 percent), with 1,080 voters (2.4 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.

The Douglas County Board of Commissioners includes Danny Tarkanian, Sharla Hales, Mark Gardner, Wesley Rice, and Walt Nowosad.

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.