The Sconi

David Becker, founder of the nonprofit the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), has been widely relied upon by mainstream media as an expert on elections. Rarely mentioned when his opinions are sought, conservative critics charge, are his past associations with progressive political activist groups, and his group’s controversial – some say illegal – influence over state and local election officials.

Last week, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, working as special counsel for Wisconsin State Assembly Republicans, was critical of Becker during a presentation of the results of his six-month investigation into the 2020 general election.

Using millions of dollars his group received from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Becker has established the Election Officials Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), which Gableman said is all about “obstruction and covering up” the alleged illegal activities of elections officials.

Gableman alleged that the state’s election officials, particularly in the five Democratic-run cities of Racine, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Kenosha, violated the state’s law prohibiting election bribery by taking millions from CEIR ally, the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), in exchange for following a set of voting procedures designed to encourage a higher voter turnout. The CTCL money, nearly $10 million to the five cities, was likewise donated by Zuckerberg.

Statewide voters' group Wisconsin Voters Alliance filed complaints with the Wisconsin Elections Commission against three of the cities and plans to charge the remaining two over the next couple of weeks.

Becker’s group recently denied a reporter from The Star News Network access through Zoom to a briefing to discuss “efforts to undermine democracy in several states,” in reference to Gableman’s work and investigations in other states examining the influence that Zuckerberg's money had over the management of elections.

“You are unable to rejoin this meeting because you were previously removed by the host,” the paper was told, even though it said it registered to join the meeting well ahead of time.

Becker started CEIR in 2016, an off-the-radar group before it received $50 million from Zuckerberg in August 2020. From 1998 to 2005, Becker was a trial lawyer in the voting section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division. 

While there, a formal complaint was made against him for contacting the city of Boston and offering help to defeat a lawsuit opened against them by the DOJ for voting infractions. 

Brad Scholzman, acting head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division at the time, stated, “It was the most unethical thing I’ve ever seen” and called Becker “a hard-core leftist” who “couldn’t stand conservatives.”

Hans von Spakovsky, who worked as counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the time, agreed with Scholzman’s characterization of Becker. 

“In his role with the DOJ, he was supposed to be nonpartisan, but his e-mails uncovered in the Boston investigation revealed nasty, disparaging remarks about Republicans," von Spakovsky said. "Very unethical and unprofessional.” 

Becker did not deny these claims when asked for comment by Legal Newsline. 

“There was no action taken against me by the Department of Justice as a result of this complaint,” he answered, dismissing the complaint as irrelevant.

A year-old Freedom of Information Act request from Legal Newsline seeking more details from DOJ into the Becker investigation is still pending.  

Before his time at the DOJ, Becker was a senior staff attorney at the People For the American Way (PFAW), where in 2007 he became the director of PFAW’s Democracy Campaign, the Capital Research Center (CRC) reports.  

“PFAW is a left-of-center activist group that promotes a policy agenda featuring public funding of abortion providers, amnesty and government funded health care, seeks to expand liberal control of the judiciary, and helps to elect liberal political candidates,” the CRC report said.