Concord Ledger

This month, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced that they would be donating $100 million towards making voting sites in the U.S. more secure, safe and efficient, according to Forbes.

The donation is not the first that Zuckerberg and his wife have made. Previously, they gave $300 million to the same cause. 

While some are praising the move, others are skeptical of Zuckerberg's involvement in politics and his philanthropy involving political causes. Zuckerberg and Facebook have recently been under increased scrutiny, especially as the platform has been accused of enabling the spread of political misinformation in the U.S. and abroad. 

Heidi Legg, a political commentator, said in an Oct. 5 tweet, "According to the FEC (Federal Election Commission), George Soros gave $3,679,800 to U.S. politics in 2020-2021 while Mark Zuckerberg gave $8,250. See our IQSS (Institute for Quantitative Social Science) data on the political donations of media owners and investors. Do we need better tracking on U.S. political influence?"

The $100 million will go toward the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit based out of Chicago that offers grants to jurisdictions in order to assist with supporting free and fair elections. In Zuckerberg's own words, the funds are to be used “to support election officials with the infrastructure they need to administer the vote.”

In Hooksett, new Hampshire, where voting officials received funding from a Zuckerberg-related organization, Democratic support rose 18.2% from 2016 to 2020, according to the Concord Ledger. The grants from the organization ranged between $5,000 and $19 million.