Special Edition Newsletter

We are looking forward to bringing you monthly newsletters beginning in March.

This urgent issue, however, could not wait, so we are sharing our Special Edition Newsletter today. Our town is facing a situation of which all of our citizens should be aware and informed.

Please read on, and sign our petition immediately to ask the RTM to please reject outside funds for our elections at the March 13th re-vote.

Did you know that Greenwich was targeted with a donation of $500,000 from an outfit called Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL)? This money was never asked for, nor is it needed, as Greenwich has never exceeded its budget for any election. CTCL is an organization that poured money from Mark Zuckerberg into election offices during the 2020 presidential elections. (Read more about CTCL below)

Are you aware that a now-contested vote took place within the Greenwich RTM (see list here) regarding the acceptance or rejection of these funds? The new RTM voting system was rife with technological complications where many votes were registered incorrectly, or not at all. Please see details here.

If you live in Greenwich this should beg some serious thought and discussion. Election integrity must always be the single most important priority. Injecting private money into a public entity (in this case a Registrar's Office!) creates the appearance of impropriety. That alone is motivation enough to reject the funds.

We have the opportunity to make this right, as there will be an RTM re-vote on March 13th. Tell your RTM representatives that you think the gift should be rejected by signing our petition today.

We are ALL Americans and, while we may disagree on politics, it can be said with fair certainty, that we are all in favor of elections that are untampered with - by anyone - under any circumstances. This includes private funding from any source, ballot stuffing and the like.

Skip to Petition

The biggest question the town of Greenwich should ask is whether a California billionaire should be allowed to waltz into town and finance aspects of their elections. As a Republican, as a Democrat, as an Independent, do you really want this in our town? Even if you share political viewpoints with this source of funding, what happens if you don't agree with the next one? Didn't our parents warn us all not to accept candy from strangers?

Take a look at the CTCL Tax Return for 2020. CTCL coffers increased monumentally with a $350M donation by Mark Zuckerburg. The previous year their donations were a mere $2.8M. Do we want Greenwich to be involved in something like that?

Sign Petition

Please sign our petition immediately - don't wait - if you agree that the Greenwich RTM should reject the private funding from CTCL.

Sign Petition

Email RTM

Send an email to the RTM, asking them to reject private funds for our elections on March 13th. Feel free to use this sample letter!

Dear RTM members,

I write to let you know of my unhappiness with the RTM’s recent willingness to accept outside funds for elections in Greenwich. Outside funds have no business in any election anywhere, regardless of party. Our election integrity depends on this.

Please reject any donation of outside funds to the Greenwich Registrars office.

Yours truly,
Name

Email RTM

Forward this email and petition to 3-5 people that you believe would agree that we should keep our elections free and fair and unaffected by private funding.

An important check on government power is thwarted if executive agencies can secure funds outside of legislatively approved budgets or appropriation bills. If those funds come from private interests, then those interests gain the power of the purse reserved to the voter-elected legislature under both the United States and Connecticut constitutions. 24 states have enacted bans or restrictions on private funding of local elections for this reason.

The right to vote in a free and fair election is the most basic civil right, one on which many other rights of the American people depend. If there is even a hint of impropriety it must be avoided at all costs.

If we agree on this, and surely we do, then we need to examine the recent developments regarding the CTCL donation to Greenwich. Regardless of party affiliation, an impartial look at the facts may help you understand the ruckus caused by the willingness to accept outside funds into our election process.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) mission statement says: "We connect Americans with the information they need to become and remain civically engaged, and ensure that our elections are more professional, inclusive, and secure" & “We harness the promise of technology to modernize the American voting experience.”

This sounds nice, but CTCL is known for pushing for left-of-center voting policies and election administration. 24 states have banned accepting donations from them (and, in fact, all private funding); CTCL nevertheless has a wide reach into local elections offices across the nation. They are funded by many left-of-center funding organizations such as the Skoll Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. And these are only the donors we know because they have to report it.

Tiana Epps-Johnson, Donny Bridges, and Whitney May, the founders of CTCL, were co-workers at the New Organizing Institute (NOI) for several years before the organization dissolved in 2015. NOI, described by a Washington Post reporter as “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry,” was a major training center for left-of-center digital activists over the decade of its existence.

CTCL has Microsoft and Facebook employees on their advisory board, and the CTCL President is a former employee of a company called Catalist. The Catalist mission: “Our commitment is to strengthen the progressive community year after year by growing and maturing this community asset and related technology and services.” These companies have all been actively pushing a political agenda (and are in the business of collecting and selling information about people).

It is important to point out that CTCL can affect the elections legally by simply advocating for policies which favor democrat voters. Eg:

1. Recommending that drop boxes be allocated by population rather than by travel distance. As they did in 2020 in PA, this disenfranchises rural voters who have to travel much further to get to a drop box, while adding no value to urban voters because volume is not an issue with drop boxes and these can be emptied regularly. Rural voters tend to be more conservative.

2. Eliminating security of Absentee ballots, extending the voting period past election day and allowing "ballot assistance." Far more Democrats vote by absentee ballot, so any policy that reduces security or allows operatives to go and collect extra absentee votes, skews the outcome in favor of Democrats.

Both these policies were pushed by CTCL in 2020.