Is Brighton Township Clerk Joe Riker a closet Democrat? How about Conway Township Clerk Elizabeth Whitt? Or Marion Township Clerk Tammy Beal?
According to Livingston County Commission chair Wes Nakagiri, they were all part of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election for Joe Biden.
Why? Because they applied for and received grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to help administer the 2020 elections during the pandemic.
Nakagiri claims that money was “tainted” because more than $400 million was donated to CTCL by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. He claims Zuckerberg steered the money to areas that favored Biden where it was used to hire “activists” into election positions – areas like Conway, Marion, and Brighton townships, all well-known Democratic strongholds that went solidly for Biden because of the tainted money.
Oh, wait, they didn’t. Trump got 72 percent of the vote in Conway Township, even more than the 69 percent he got in 2016.
Not that facts like that matter. Nakagiri will try to push through a resolution at the commission’s 6 p.m. June 13 meeting barring the county from accepting any donations for administering elections in the future (although the county itself didn’t apply for any funds and he can’t stop municipalities from doing so).
The real purpose of this resolution is to repeat the Big Lie that the election was stolen due to non-existent irregularities and to continue to feed the resentment of the GOP base.
In fact, jurisdictions across the political spectrum received funds. Besides the townships of Brighton, Conway, and Marion, Livingston County municipalities applying for and receiving funds were the cities of Brighton and Howell, and the townships of Genoa, Green Oak, Hamburg, and Putnam. You can find them listed on the center’s tax filing here.
Yet somehow, Trump still managed to carry the county. And that puts the lie to Nakagiri’s Big Lie.
