Remember when Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match?
That fight between Twitter/Threads billionaires never ended up happening, but a different battle in Wisconsin certainly did—and the voters just knocked Mark Zuckerberg clear out of our elections.
Last week, Wisconsin voters approved two constitutional amendments—54 percent voted to ban private funding in our elections, and nearly 59 percent voted to ban outside election workers. Those dual victories were major achievements in the fight for clean elections in Wisconsin, but neither would have happened without the bravery of dozens of legislators and the backing of the people of Wisconsin.
We all owe these legislators, specifically Majority Leader Tyler August and Speaker Robin Vos in the Assembly and bill author Sen. Eric Wimberger, Committee Chair Dan Knodl, and Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu in the Senate, a big debt of gratitude.
First, because they stuck their necks out to get the measure on the ballot in the first place, but second, because they did so even though they knew they were making an enemy out of one of the richest people on Earth.
That’s bravery—and it’s putting principles first instead of taking the easy way out.
It’s important to remember how high the stakes really are in Wisconsin elections—and how far the Left is willing to go to make sure they gain and retain power. These amendments weren’t for the prevention of some future, hypothetical danger—they were real-world solutions to real-world problems that happened in 2020.
Question One was put on the ballot after Mark Zuckerberg spent more than $10 million in Wisconsin’s elections in 2020 (and $400 million across the country), with more than 85 percent of the money in Wisconsin going solely to deep-blue Madison and Milwaukee, along with the cities of Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha.
Question Two was in response to Zuckerbucks-funded election “staffing help,” like the Green Bay election staff scandal in 2020. If you recall, leftist groups didn’t just send a blank check—they shamelessly deployed their own staff to administer our Wisconsin elections. We’ve been burned so many times in Wisconsin, from “Democracy in the Park” in downtown Madison to illegal, unmanned vote drop boxes to ballot harvesting vans—and all in a purple battleground state where the wins and losses are separated by single digits or less.
Thanks to the people of Wisconsin, both are now behind us as we look forward to 2024.
Other states have already taken action—27 states have fully banned Zuckerbucks in all future elections, many through bipartisan agreements.
Again, it’s worth remembering the stakes of this fight. Here in Wisconsin, less than 21,000 votes separated President Biden from President Trump, the third closest margin of any state in the county. Arizona was closest with less than 10,500, and Georgia was second with less than 12,000.
All three have now banned Zuckerbucks, along with 24 other states across the country for a total of 27 states. That total includes six of the eight closest states in the 2020 presidential race. In more than half of the states in America, including some of the closest battlegrounds, the 2024 election is going to be starting on more level ground than four years ago. That’s huge.
Thanks to those brave legislators and Wisconsin voters, our state is going to be one of them. Getting leftist California billionaires out of the driver’s seat for Wisconsin elections is important, and it is a huge step toward making election administration boring again.
Wisconsinites want clear laws being followed to the letter, and these new amendments will help us all move forward with elections that look more like they did before COVID-era expansions and excuses relaxed basic security measures.
Neither do we want our elections to devolve into a billionaire arms race to see who can destroy the other side first by openly manipulating and subverting our voting laws. Elections shouldn’t be a contest between billionaires duking it out in private—that’s not the group anyone should want us outsourcing free and fair elections to.
Thankfully, the tide is changing.
In late 2021, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company announced that it would be demoting and de-emphasizing posts on political topics through its recommendation algorithm, and this month, Facebook announced that it will be getting rid of the “news” tab altogether.
(Have you ever lost a fight so bad you decided to get out of politics in general?)
Only time will tell whether last week’s vote was a knockout blow for the influence of social media (and bottomless left-wing campaign cash) on our elections. Either way, we should be grateful that those brave legislators like Majority Leader Tyler August, Speaker Robin Vos, Sen. Eric Wimberger, Committee Chair Dan Knodl, and Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu in the Senate, who decided to take a stand and put the issue on the ballot.
And it’s a lesson worth remembering—while the social media celebrities and their cage matches end up being all talk, we have real fighters in the Wisconsin legislature.
