A liberal nonprofit that accused President Donald Trump of unleashing a "surge in white supremacy and hate" donated $85,000 last fall to election administrators in Georgia's largest county as part of a campaign to turn out black votes in the 2020 election. Auditors now want some of that money returned.
The Fulton County Auditor declared this month that county election officials failed to spend all of the Southern Poverty Law Center's grant for buying absentee ballot drop boxes and did not comply with one of the grant's primary requirements to publicly disclose how many ballots were collected in the boxes.
"The grant specified that any unused funds were to be returned to the SPLC by December 31, 2020. During our review, we identified that (21) ballot drop boxes were purchased on September 10, 2020 for a total cost of $40,614," the auditor reported. "We also noted that as of the date of our review, the remaining $44,386 had not been returned to the SPLC and the funds remain in the Registration and Election Department's budget."
Officials in the county elections office, which includes Atlanta and has suffered from documented mismanagement, told the auditors they were in touch with the county's grant division about returning money. But the report noted the deadline for doing so was already eight months past.
"Failure to return grant funds by the agreed upon deadline may lead to misuse of funds, restriction of future funding, as well as inaccurate record-keeping and financial reporting," the auditors noted.
The audit findings are the latest to shine a light on private funds from prominent liberals that bypassed political parties, candidates and campaigns during the 2020 election and went instead to the independent judges and administrators of local elections, all in the name of pandemic safety.
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