The majority of Wisconsin voters on Tuesday formally approved two Republican-backed referendums that seek to bar outside groups from funding state elections and require only designated election officials to administer state elections.
With nearly all of the votes counted, 54 percent voted in favor of the question aimed at prohibiting the private funding of elections and 58 percent approved the question aimed at limiting election conduct to election officials. The state Constitution will now be amended to include both provisions, considering a majority of Wisconsin voters is needed to ratify constitutional amendments.
The ballot initiatives were created in response to what Republicans call the “Zuckerbucks” controversy. During the 2020 presidential election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated over $420 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation & Research. The two election-focused nonprofits disbursed some of these grants to state and local election officials in more than 200 Wisconsin municipalities, including Republican areas, to support voter education and election infrastructure. The money was also dispersed in other states.
Wisconsin Republicans pitched the two referendum questions to ensure election integrity in their state. Wisconsin GOP Party chairman Brian Schimming praised voters for approving the ballot initiatives.
“Wisconsin has spoken and the message is clear: elections belong to voters, not out-of-state billionaires. Thanks to the efforts by the Republican Party of Wisconsin and grassroots organizing, Wisconsinites have turned the page on Zuckerbucks and secured our elections from dark money donors,” Schimming said Tuesday night.
On the other hand, Democrats and clerks argued that elections are already underfunded at the local, state, and federal level and claim the referendums would only make matters worse.
“Rather than work to make sure our clerks have the resources they need to run elections, Republicans are pushing a nonsense amendment to satisfy Donald Trump,” Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Ben Wikler previously said in a statement opposing the ballot measures.
Republican efforts to prohibit the use of election grants were repeatedly shot down in court. In 2021, Democratic governor Tony Evers also vetoed a bill that would have barred local governments from accepting outside funding for their elections. If such grants were accepted, the state could have equally distributed them based on population size. Notably, constitutional amendments cannot be vetoed.
Alabama and Florida have also barred the private funding of election administration in response to the “Zuckerbucks” controversy.
In addition to Wisconsin, at least 27 states have either approved similar ballot measures or enacted legislation to ban the private funding of elections.
Tuesday night’s approval of the referendums is rooted in historical precedent: Wisconsin voters have more often than not approved ballot initiatives, with the state Constitution having been ratified roughly 150 out of 200 times since 1854, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.