Southern Wisconsin Times

After targeting metro areas with its nonprofit grants to help cities with election problems, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) created a COVID-19 Response Rural Grant Program to provide language assistance and help smaller jurisdictions deal with changes in absentee voting laws or rules made in response to the pandemic.

Back in July, the nonprofit organization awarded $6.3 million in nonprofit grants to the five largest cities in Wisconsin to help facilitate a safer and smoother voting process, as well as getting more voters to the polls, CTCL announced on its website.

The CTCL is a center election advocacy group, Influence Watch said on its website. CTCL pushes for left-of-center voting policies and election administration. "It has a wide reach into local elections offices across the nation and is 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 Foundation," the website reported.

Madison, Racine, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Green Bay, which all had trouble with mail in voting, absentee voting, and long lines at limited polling locations in April, received grants. In Milwaukee alone "9,000 absentee ballots requested by voters were never sent," the Chicago Tribune reported. Across the state many thousands more absentee ballots were never received, forcing voters to risk infection and long lines at polling locales. 

The grants covered some of the election costs of opening more voting sites, setting up drive through and drop-box locations, providing personal protective equipment for poll workers, and adequately staffing each site. Jurisdictions that are required to provide language assistance and have a higher percentage of historically disenfranchised residents and jurisdictions that recently changed absentee voting laws or rules due to COVID-19 were prioritized, CTCL's website reported. 

More specifically, $2,57 million went to support early in-person voting and vote by mail. Another $1.81 million went toward launching poll worker recruitment, training, and safety efforts. The grant provided $876,700 to ensure safe, efficient election day administration – providing PPE, for example, and drive through voting. The final $1.06 million was dedicated to expanding voter education & outreach efforts.

Grants do not get awarded to every county in every state. A Rock County, Wisconsin clerk said that her county didn't not receive any grant from the nonprofit. Before CTCL created its rural grant program, Rock County did not fit the criteria for receiving funds with its smaller population..

"The deadly COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global public health crisis, and seriously impaired the ability of local governments to administer safe and smooth elections," Racine Mayor Cory Mason told Spectrum News 1. "These grants will help each municipality make investments that will ensure smooth, safe and healthy elections in a time of a national health pandemic – which each municipality otherwise would struggle to do while facing an intense budget shortfall.”