“Zuckerbucks” are no longer allowed in Wisconsin after voters banned the private funding of elections in the key swing state, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, celebrating and explaining the significance of that development.
This month, a ballot measure which states that “donations and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or used in…connection with the conduct of any primary, election, or referendum” passed with 54.4 percent of the vote — welcome news to the Wisconsin Republican party.
“Zuckerbucks are essentially money grants that are funded by liberal groups — primarily Mark Zuckerberg, but sometimes other groups as well — that are shelled out to local units of government in Wisconsin,” Schimming said, explaining that there were thousands of units of government that received these grants to supposedly “help” fund local election administration.
“It’s bad from the get go, and we had to do a constitutional amendment referendum on the questions that are on the ballot on Tuesday. And, you know, essentially, you had five or six Democrat cities who got almost all of the money,” he said. Those cities included Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Kenosha.
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Breitbart · Brian Schimming – April 5, 2024“Those are almost all cities that are run by former Democrat legislators,” he said, describing them as “hardcore lefties.”
As a result, the legislature passed bills to try to ban local units of government from taking these grants from these liberal groups, but the governor vetoed it.
“We had an option under state law in Wisconsin, that we the legislature could pass resolutions in a couple of concurrent sessions” and bring it to the ballot, he said, adding, “so that’s what we did, and we were victorious on Tuesday.”
Those in favor of Zuckerbucks tried to claim that the money was used to help “poor, underfunded local elections officials run their elections,” asserting it is all about easing access to the ballot box. However, Schimming said there were clear examples of corruption.
“But we had places like in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where you had folks funded, outside people, funded by separate bucks that were actively involved in the active administration of local elections, including access to balance counting rooms, and it was really, really bad,” he explained.
“And we have a bad Democrat mayor of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and a city clerk who was his appointee, and they essentially handed their local election over to these people,” he said, noting that in one case on election day in 2022, “they would not allow our poll watchers to watch polling machines in the city’s high schools from a safe distance.”
“They wouldn’t allow it and move them out of there. We went to Brown County Court, which is the county that Green Bay is in, and got an injunction against the city and forced them to allow those people back. And the importance of that injunction is number one, it was so egregious what they were doing. But number two, it sends a signal to elections officials across Wisconsin that that the Republican Party and the conservatives have the right to observe local elections from an appropriate distance,” he said, ultimately concluding that it sends an even greater message: “If you mess around with our ability to make sure there are fair elections we’ll object, and if you don’t do anything, we will drag you into court.”
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