New York Times: N.Y. Voting Officials Need Money. They Were Told to Go to Zuckerberg.

ALBANY — After the June primary in New York State unraveled under a mass of problems, elections officials immediately issued a plea: To stand any chance of handling the five million absentee ballots expected on Election Day, far more state funding would be needed.

But with no state money in sight, the State Board of Elections had another solution in mind.

It recommended that county boards apply for grants — not from the state, but from a nonprofit foundation, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, that are backed by a $250 million donation from Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who said they were seeking to “preserve the integrity of our elections.”

The recommendation seemed curious: It was Facebook’s lack of oversight of disinformation in the 2016 election, after all, which led to accusations of electoral meddling and strong condemnations from Democrats and some Republicans.

Election officials have insisted that they will likely need up to $50 million for extra staff, equipment and mailings to avoid a repeat of the primary mess, when some congressional races went weeks without results and tens of thousands of ballots were disqualified. …

Good government groups ridiculed the idea that the state, which has a $175 billion budget, was directing local election officials to get help from private sources funded by Facebook’s riches.

“Something is seriously wrong with New York State’s democracy when less than two months before this November’s historic vote, local boards of election are so broke they are pleading for funding from a charity,” five groups, including the state chapters of Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, wrote in a letter to the governor in mid-September, asking for $50 million in emergency election funds.