A virulently leftist anti-Trump organization paid $85,000 to a Georgia county's election judges last fall but not all of it was used for those purposes, and now questions are being raised.
Specifically, the Fulton County auditor is reporting that $44,386 of the funds contributed to the leftist election agenda by the Southern Poverty Law Center was unspent and was supposed to have been returned last winter.
The dispute has been profiled by Just the News.
The auditor's report explained; "The grant specified that any unused funds were to be returned to the SPLC by December 31, 2020. During our review, we identified that (21) ballot drop boxes were purchased on September 10, 2020 for a total cost of $40,614. We also noted that as of the date of our review, the remaining $44,386 had not been returned to the SPLC and the funds remain in the Registration and Election Department's budget."
The question is just the latest to be raised about the funding of the 2020 election and what influence millions of dollars may have had. While the SPLC donation was only $85,000, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg handed out some $350 million to mostly leftist election operators to help them "run" the election.
The Southern Poverty Law Center's grant was based on race, as it was intended to boost turnout among "black voters," the report said.
The report described the SPLC as "a liberal nonprofit that accused President Donald Trump of unleashing a 'surge in white supremacy and hate,'" the report said.
There already have been other documented election problems in the county, and election officials there claimed to Just the News they were in touch with county officials about returning the money.
The auditor warned that missing specified deadlines – by eight months – "may lead to misuse of funds, restriction of future funding, as well as inaccurate record-keeping and financial reporting."
It was all in the name of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the audit findings, according to Just the News, "are the latest to shine a light on private funds from prominent liberals that bypassed political parties, candidates and campaigns during the 2020 election and went instead to the independent judges and administrators of local elections."
The report said much of Zuckerberg's huge donation went to "large blue, urban areas" and was intended to increase voting among groups that typically go Democrat.
At least eight states already have banned those private payments to election administrators since the November 2020 election.
The SPLC controversy could boost the profile of such behavior given that it, although created as a charitable group, openly "opposed" President Trump and his policies.
The report said it was "relentless" in its attacks on Trump and Republicans during the 2020 election.
Former Kansas attorney general Phill Kline, now a part of the Amistad Project that is pursuing voter integrity initiatives, said, "The SPLC joins dozens of left-leaning nonprofits funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into government election offices dictating policies which turned those offices into partisan campaign centers. We have circumstantial evidence this effort was multistate and coordinated thereby implicating federal and state law concerns."
via wnd