SC judge rejects request to block private elections grants funded by Facebook CEO
A federal judge on Monday denied a conservative legal group’s request for an injunction preventing Charleston and Richland counties from accepting and using private grant money they’ve received to help conduct the 2020 general election.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel denied a temporary restraining order sought by a group calling itself the South Carolina Voter’s Alliance, writing that its legal claims were “dubious, at best” and stating that an injunction would likely disrupt the counties’ ability to administer the Nov. 3 election while making voting in person less safe.
“Under the circumstances here,” Gergel wrote, “a TRO is plainly not in the public interest and the balance of equities tips decidedly in favor of Defendants.”
Gergel’s denial comes less than a week after a federal judge in Iowa rejected a similar TRO request filed by the Iowa Voter Alliance regarding private grants awarded to county elections officials in that state.
The Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, the nonprofit law group behind both suits, has filed litigation challenging the receipt of private election grants by local elections officials in numerous swing states and states with hotly contested U.S. congressional races.
The group argues the grants, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan funded, were targeted to areas with high numbers of progressive voters in an attempt to influence the outcome of the November election.
According to its suit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina, the group does not want progressive candidates to prevail in the November election and argues the grants awarded to Charleston and Richland counties could widen voters’ existing preference for progressives.
The Amistad Project claims acceptance of the grants violates the Help America Vote Act, the National Voters Registration Act and the Election and Supremacy Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Phil Kline, the Amistad Project’s director, said Monday that Gergel’s order did not necessarily spell the end of his campaign to block local officials from accepting election grants, but acknowledged it would likely delay it until after the Nov. 3 election.
He said he planned to continue fighting the legality of private election grants even after Election Day, if he can muster the resources, because he fears the privatization of election management.
”This privatization of elections cannot be allowed to stand,” Kline said. “It allows billionaires into the counting room and undermines the integrity of the election.”
The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit that’s been administering the grants to elections officials across the country through its COVID-19 Response Grant program, denied any bias and celebrated Gergel’s rejection of the injunction.
“Another day, another judge rejecting baseless litigation that would make it harder for all voters to participate in the election and remain safe and healthy,” the organization said in a statement.
CTCL said its election grants are open to all local elections offices across the country and that any legitimate jurisdiction that has applied has received a minimum of $5,000.
The grants have been used by cash-strapped elections officials to purchase voting equipment, hire poll workers and acquire personal protective equipment for elections staff, among other things.
More than 2,500 local election jurisdictions across the country have applied for funding to date, including 43 of 46 counties in South Carolina, the organization said.
CTCL has declined to provide a list of how much each county was awarded, but local officials in Charleston and Richland counties — both of which went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 — have acknowledged receiving $695,000 and $730,000, respectively.
Greenville County, which received a $660,000 grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life but voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in 2016, was not named as a defendant in the Amistad Project’s suit.
Kline said Monday that the group’s suit named only Charleston and Richland counties as defendants because those were the only counties in South Carolina he’d known had received grants.
He said if he’d known Greenville or any other counties had also been recipients, he would have included them in the suit, and said their omissions were not related to the conservative leanings of their constituents.
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 3:07 PM.