"Grants for Votes" Scheme in Georgia?
CTCL Grants in the 2020 Georgia Presidential Election
Question: Is it possible to QUANTIFY the impact of each CTCL grant on every county outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election in the state of Georgia?
Answer: Yes it is and the overall impact equates to ~ 185,000 votes for Biden, some of which could have been intended for Trump.
Let’s examine how.
Background
The Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) is a 501(c)(3) organization whose IRS 990 is readily available. CTCL lists Tina-Epps Johnson as the Executive Director for this Chicago based group. The total expenditures in 2020 were $335,429,878.
“THE CENTER'S MISSION IS TO INCREASE CIVIC PARTICIPATION BY MODERNIZING ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE PEOPLE THEY SERVE. WE DO THIS BY (1) EDUCATING THE PUBLIC ABOUT GOVERNMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES AND (2) EDUCATING LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ABOUT SKILLS.[my emphasis]”
The top donors listed on the IRS 990 are all anonymous individual people. The top 2 donations account for the majority of the funding at $328,176,850 and $21,117,000. It has been widely reported in the news who these donors might be.
Each of CTCL’s 2,447 grants listed on the IRS 990 are of the Type “Local Government” or “County Government”. The stated reason on the IRS 990 for all 2,447 grants (for all states) is the same: “TO SUPPORT THE SAFE ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC ELECTIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMMIC”.
The revenue was distributed in two tranches.
Tranche 1 - $1,267,136
The IRS 990 states this about Tranche 1.
“THE CENTER EDUCATES THE PUBLIC ABOUT GOVERNMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, FOCUSING PARTICULARLY ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT. THE CENTER DOES THIS BY AGGREGATING AND DISSEMINATING DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT GOVERNMENT, CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE, ELECTED OFFICIALS, AND VOTING IN THE UNITED STATES IN EASILY ACCESSIBLE "DATASETS". THESE DATASETS INCLUDE INFORMATION THAT HELP THE GENERAL PUBLIC FIND BASIC INFORMATION, INCLUDING WHAT IS ON THEIR BALLOT AND WHO REPRESENTS THEM. THESE DATASETS ARE FREELY AND UNIVERSALLY AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC.”
Tranche 2 - $332,090,669
The IRS 990 states this about Tranche 2.
“THE CENTER'S GOVERNMENT SERVICES PROGRAM EDUCATES GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ABOUT THE SKILLS, STRATEGIES, AND TOOLS TO ENGAGE THEIR CITIZENS. THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH (1) WRITTEN AND MULTIMEDIA MATERIALS AND (2) IN-PERSON TRAINING SEMINARS FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. DURING FISCAL YEAR 2021, THE CENTER RECEIVED TWO SUBSTANTIAL GRANTS TO SUPPORT THE SAFE ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC ELECTIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND TO PROVIDE GENERAL SUPPORT. [my emphasis]”
Georgia Grants
Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 27% (43 counties) received grants from CTCL. It is not known how many of the remaining 116 counties were offered a grant but refused. It might be interesting to know how many counties were “sold” the idea of taking a grant even though they may have initially refused. It would also be interesting to know if the CTCL gave the counties money to apply to CTCL for the grant? I would expect the grant application money to come from the counties themselves.
65% of the state of Georgia 2020 Presidential votes (~3,300,000) were cast in the 43 counties where CTCL grants were distributed. The remaining 35% of the votes (~1,700,000) were cast in 116 counties that did not receive CTCL grants. Clearly, this indicates CTCL funding was not equitably spread to all counties.
Analysis Correlations
This analysis will use several simple correlations. Everyone can reproduce this type of analysis for their county.
D/R ratio
D/R is a ratio of Democrat to Republican cast votes. For example, a D/R ratio of 1.0 would indicate the same number of votes were cast for Biden and Trump. A D/R value of greater than 1 would indicate more Democrat votes. A D/R ratio of less than 1 would indicate more Republican votes.
D/R 2020 - D/R 2016 Difference
The difference between D/R 2020 and D/R 2016 represents the shift in votes relative to the each party.
For example, in a county in 2016, if Clinton received 500,000 votes and Trump received 550,000 votes, this would yield a D/R of 0.909. In 2020 if Biden received 525,000 votes and Trump received 530,000 votes, this would yield a D/R of 0.991.
The difference would then be [0.991 - 0.909 = +0.082] indicates a upward trend in the ratio of Democrat votes of 8.2% relative to Republican votes. A negative difference would indicate an upward trend in Republican votes, relative to Democrat.
In addition, the D/R 2020 average value of “CTCL Counties” and “non-CTCL Counties” can be calculated.
Grant Impact per Vote
The 2020 D/R average value for “CTCL” and “non-CTCL” counties provides the ability to calculate what the potential impact was on “voter turnout”. In other words, had there been no grants, what would be a reasonable ratio of D/R for CTCL counties?
Drop Boxes
The number of drop boxes per CTCL county will be correlated to CTCL grant value per county.
Analysis & Results
D/R Ratios
The average D/R ratio change of “CTCL Counties” between 2016 to 2020 was +0.096 (9.6%) while the average D/R ratio for “non-CTCL Counties” was effectively 0.000. This means that on average, in the 43 CTCL counties the difference in the D/R ratio between 2016 and 2020 was 9.6% HIGHER in 2020 favoring Democrats. To put it another way, counties which did not receive CTCL grants had a D/R ratio in 2016 that was on average the same as 2020.
Let’s look at the top 10 counties in terms of CTCL grants
There is a lot to unpack in this table. These calculations are not difficult and easily reproducible from publicly available data. Here are a few examples of how to look at this table.
Douglas County received more than 2x more CTCL grant money than the next closest county (2nd column).
Based on the average D/R ratio differences between 2016 and 2020 for CTCL counties (9.6%), in Fulton County, 36,674 more Democrat votes occurred because of the CTCL grant (3rd column).
Looking at 2020DIFF, Muscogee County provided almost the same amount of Democrat votes as Douglas County even though ~ 30x more was provided in grant money.
In Macon County, each of these “grant votes” between 2016 and 2020 cost $2,730 (4th column). This is simply the ratio of CTCL grant and 2020DIFF.
In Dekalb County, it cost $26 per vote to achieve the actual voter turnout for Democrats and Republicans (5th column).
32 of the 43 CTCL counties (~75%) had a positive 2020DIFF value indicating an increasing trend in Democrat vote ratio in 2020.
55 of the 116 non-CTCL counties (~47%) had a positive 2020DIFF value. Therefore CTCL counties were 28% (75%-47%) more likely to trend Democrat in the ratio of D/R in 2020
For all 43 CTCL counties ~ 185,000 additional votes went Democrat in 2020 due to the impact of grants using the 2020DIFF ratio of 9.6%.
For clarity, 2020DIFF can be calculated with a simple formula:
[2020 Party Vote Total] - [2020 Party Vote Total]*[0.096]
The above formula calculates what the vote total would have been in 2020 without the influence of CTCL.
Of course, the above does not address the legitimacy of those votes in terms of potential stuffing of ballot boxes, phantom voters etc. That is outside the scope of this article.
This brings me to several questions:
Why is it OK for any donor to contribute money to fund Local and County government operations pertaining to elections?
Shouldn’t government be 100% funded by tax dollars approved by the citizens in a fully transparent manner?
Do the governments have a full accounting of every dollar spent in 2020 from CTCL? Is that accounting available for citizens to review?
Do the counties have copies of all of the grant applications supplied to CTCL and an accounting of what was spent on those applications?
Do citizens of these counties really want outside anonymous money influencing their local government operations?
Dollars for Drop Boxes
Information on the number of drop boxes that existed in 2020 is also readily available on-line. There are some minor discrepancies in the number of boxes reported for some counties, but generally speaking, these numbers are accurate enough for our purposes here.
The main conclusion here is to note that once the actual cost per box from the vendor supplying the boxes is removed from the $/Box value, you are left with an amount that needs to be accounted for by the local government. Douglas County spent over $2,000,000 per ballot drop box.
If the grants were not spent on the actual box cost, what was it spent on?
In Conclusion
In my view, tax laws need to be changed to disallow private funding from any source (Republican or Democrat) for funding election related government logistics. If governments need more money, they need to ask We the People for it.
Now that we understand the impact of this “Grants for Votes” scheme, voters need to start NOW identifying any organization who are supplying grants to our governments and what the intended purpose is for the 2022 Primaries.
For historical purposes, each and every local or county government needs to have a FOIA filed to obtain all accounting related to the administration of the 2020 election. Citizens should look at what was reported on the IRS 990 and what the county records state.
Let’s start with that!
All CTCL Counties
