Voter Groups, Funded By Liberal Megadonors, Launch Pressure Campaign For Meta To Censor Election Info

• Democrat-aligned contributors are financing left-wing get-out-the vote organizations attempting to influence Meta to suppress election “disinformation” on its most recent social media app. 
• The liberal get-out-the vote-groups came together to sign a letter calling on Meta to censor election “disinformation” on the new app, Threads. 
• “It is no surprise to see these organizations advocating for the censorship of ‘disinformation,’ a name reserved by the mainstream media for any information that makes Democrats look bad,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Left’s small army of ‘nonpartisan’ voter registration and civic engagement nonprofits is one of the Democratic Party’s most useful tools for winning elections. They rake in hundreds of millions of dollars each cycle by allowing billionaire donors to claim tax deductions for thinly veiled partisan electioneering targeting demographics that widely favor Democrats.”

Democrat-aligned donors are funding liberal get-out-the-vote groups pressuring Meta to censor election “disinformation” on its newest social media platform, according to grants and public documents.

Left-leaning get-out-the-vote organizations, including Vote.org, When We All Vote and RepresentUs, joined forces, signing a July letter to Meta demanding that the tech giant responsible for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram enforce the censorship of election “disinformation” on its recently launched platform, Threads. The letter calls on Meta to release “a full, transparent sharing of information around any and all proposed or in-place policies related to election integrity, disinformation, voting and elections.”

These organizations work to increase voter turnout by targeting demographics that disproportionately vote for Democrats, nonprofit experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The groups state they are nonpartisan, but their funding and efforts tend to be left-wing.

“It is no surprise to see these organizations advocating for the censorship of ‘disinformation,’ a name reserved by the mainstream media for any information that makes Democrats look bad,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, told the DCNF. “The Left’s small army of ‘nonpartisan’ voter registration and civic engagement nonprofits is one of the Democratic Party’s most useful tools for winning elections. They rake in hundreds of millions of dollars each cycle by allowing billionaire donors to claim tax deductions for thinly veiled partisan electioneering targeting demographics that widely favor Democrats.”

In total, 11 voting groups signed the letter but Vote.org posted it on its website and is one of the biggest get-out-the-vote groups in the U.S., according to NPR.

Threads reached 100 million registrations by July 10, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on the platform. “As Threads builds its audience, it is incumbent that you make it clear that the platform will not be a place where baseless conspiracies and unverified reports are allowed to proliferate,” the letter reads.

Meta enforces the same election policies on Threads that they have on Facebook, a spokesman told NPR. He added Meta is seeking more methods to tackle false information in upcoming Threads updates.

“It is not surprising these activist groups are trying to use Big Tech to influence elections—they’ve done it before,” Stewart Whitson, legal director at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told the DCNF. “But now, they are seeking to combine the power and resources of the Federal government with that of Big Tech to tip the election scales in their favor,” he said, referencing a 2021 executive order by President Joe Biden.

The Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting enables “nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

“Left-leaning third party activist groups are not only allowed to participate in election administration, but they are also recruited and empowered to mobilize a sub-group of voters, those likely to vote for the current President’s party, and use federal dollars, lists, and resources to do so,” Whitson told the DCNF. “If this effort succeeds, they’ll add the power of Big Tech as well.”

One signatory of the letter is When We All Vote, which former First Lady Michelle Obama founded in 2018 and has numerous celebrity co-chairs, including Tom Hanks and Megan Rapinoe, according to its website. When We All Vote is an initiative of the nonprofit Civic Nation.

Left-wing billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations funded When We All Vote with multiple grants totaling $2.5 million, according to its database. Additionally, Civic Nation received three grants totaling $235,000 from Open Society Foundations.

Open Society also contributed a $750,000 grant to Civic Nation Action, an affiliated advocacy group, according to the database.

Soros’ Open Society Foundations’ affiliates contribute almost exclusively to Democrats, totaling about $900,000 since 1996, according to data from nonpartisan watchdog Open Secrets.

Civic Nation targeted college campuses to increase civic engagement, engaging with 963 campuses, according to its 2022 impact report. When We All Vote utilized its famous co-chairs like Michelle Obama, Steph Curry and Selena Gomez to inform voters about how elected officials influence abortion policy and helped those affected by the issue to register to vote.

The report also credits the initiative for “the second-highest youth turnout rate for a midterm election in the past 30 years,” stating, “When We All Vote’s cutting edge programming played a critical role in achieving this outcome.”

“Apparently not satisfied with turning out millions of Democrats to vote, the civic engagement industrial complex is looking to expand its horizons and find innovative new ways to give Democrats an unfair electioneering advantage,” Thayer told the DCNF.

Moreover, New Venture Fund, which is managed by Arabella Advisors, a consultant firm with connections to the Democratic Party, funded Civic Nation with $175,000 and When We All Vote with $120,000, according to its 2020 public disclosure. New Venture Fund affiliates have given $216,514 only to Democrats, according to Open Secrets.

RepresentUs also received between $100,000 and $499,000 in donations from Tides Foundation in 2016, according to its website. Tides Center, which is one of Tides’ charitable funds, funneled almost $6 million into bail funds following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, the DCNF previously reported. Some of the funds it contributed to have helped allegedly violent criminals post bail.

Additionally, Tides Foundation announced it became the fiscal sponsor for Black Lives Matter Global Network in July 2020.

RepresentUs CEO Joshua Graham Lynn accused former President Donald Trump of “suggesting we abolish the constitution” in the organization’s 2022 annual report.

Further, Silicon Valley Community Foundation contributed $1.25 million to Vote.org, according to a 2021 IRS tax form. The California-based foundation also gave more than $5 million to both Tides Foundation and the Barack Obama Foundation, according to a 2021 IRS tax form.

Silicon Valley Community Foundation strives to tackle “climate change and environmental injustice,” which “addresses the disproportionate impact of climate change and other environmental hazards on low-income communities and communities of color,” according to its website.

Vote.org targeted young people and colleges, particularly prioritizing historically black colleges and universities and “minority-serving institutions,” according to its 2022 impact report. The organization had direct outreach initiatives on 45 college campuses, “reach[ing] nearly 1 million students” and collaborating with over 50 social media influencers to reach students as well.

“States across the country should move to outlaw the private funding of election administration,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told the DCNF.

Vote.org, When We All Vote, RepresentUs and Meta did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.