Wisconsin voters made the Badger State the 28th in the Union to ban private funding of public elections this week. Good. A memo written by a Democratic operative on how Democratic donors should spend their money to maximize their chances of winning this November shows why Congress should pass a national ban now.

During the 2020 elections, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan directed over $400 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life and Center for Election Innovation & Research, two allegedly nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations. 

According to  reports filed by these organizations, Zuckerberg’s money was used to “increase absentee voting” and “dramatically expand strategic voter education and outreach.” If these voter registration and absentee voting efforts had been done on a nonpartisan basis, perhaps they could be considered beneficial to democracy. The more people who vote, the better.

But the Zuckerberg money was not spent on a nonpartisan basis. A detailed analysis shows that the grant money went “on both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas.” In other words, by focusing their grant money on neighborhoods where Democrats enjoyed overwhelming support, Zuckerberg was able to use tax-free money to help President Joe Biden win election without reporting any of the money spent as a donation to the Biden campaign.

And Zuckerberg’s tactic of using supposedly nonprofit groups to launder money to the Democratic Party is not an isolated incident. This week, a memo written by Democratic Party strategist Aaron Strauss came to light showing that Strauss was urging Democratic Party donors not to give to nonprofit groups that target unregistered voters generally, but instead to target money only to nonprofit groups that work with communities that overwhelmingly support Democrats.

Strauss noted that in previous years, all unregistered voters leaned Democratic so it made sense to try and register everyone. But since Donald Trump started running for office, unregistered voters now split their ballots more evenly. So, to be cost-effective, Strauss told wealthy Democratic donors like Zuckerberg to only target “specific, heavily pro-Biden populations” such as black Americans.

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That 28 states have already banned private money from going to election administration is a positive development. Congress should go further and ban it in all 50 states. But as the Strauss memo shows, even that is not enough. Voter registration drives, which for decades have been seen as a legitimate nonpartisan activity for nonprofit organizations, are clearly being weaponized by Democrats for partisan gain.

Congress must go further and ban the use of nonprofit dollars for voter registration. If the Democratic and Republican Parties want to register voters, or the Biden or Trump campaigns, great. They can pay people to do that through the existing campaign finance system. But nonprofit groups should not be involved in voter outreach, and neither should county, state, or federal government employees.