…and it’s a good sign that Louisiana isn’t going to devolve into the kind of ballot-harvesting chaos that Georgia, Michigan and Arizona did following the big-money grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life doled out in states like those.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling last week in a case Attorney General Jeff Landry brought against CTCL to stop the organization from making grants to local elections offices in predominantly Democrat (read: majority black) areas for the 2020 election. Landry’s office lost at the trial court level, but that just got overturned. A press release from the AG’s office adds some detail…

In a major win for election integrity, a Louisiana Court of Appeal has sided with Attorney General Jeff Landry in his lawsuit against the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) over private funding of elections.

After a district judge dismissed the suit over CTCL violating state law by trying to inject private funds into our election system during the 2020 presidential election cycle, a three-judge panel at the Third Circuit yesterday reversed that decision and remanded the case back to the trial court.

“Our law is clear: no individual, including Mark Zuckerberg, should supersede the people’s elected representatives,” said Attorney General Landry. “Our elections should never be for sale; private money should not fund our elections.”

The appellate court agreed with Attorney General Landry that the trial court’s conclusion was “legally incorrect” – ruling that Attorney General Landry “has stated a cause of action to protect an interest of the state by preventing the funding of elections with private money.”

“I applaud the great work done by my Assistant Attorneys General Jeffrey Wale, Carey Jones, Jeddie Smith, and Ryan Montegut,” continued Attorney General Landry. “My office and I will continue to defend Louisiana’s election system against improper influence.”

CTCL is, as our readers are likely aware, an organization funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It’s a Hard Left outfit which has brazenly favored Democrat Party campaigns by perverting election laws, and in 2020 CTCL used nearly $400 million in funding provided by the Zuckerbergs to “fortify” the 2020 election by doling out grants for Democrat-majority cities like Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia that the local elections offices would be able to staff up with community organizers and ballot harvesters and to install “drop boxes” for mail-in ballots.

Everyone knows what happened as a result.

Landry fought this in Louisiana, though his initial lawsuit to stop CTCL from making grants in the state didn’t bear immediate fruit in the courts. What he was able to do, though, was to create enough friction that the organization was frightened off by the prospect of its practices being subjected to discovery and vetting in a courtroom. CTCL made no grants in Louisiana in 2020.

Additionally, Rep. Blake Miguez has brought bills in the last two legislative sessions aimed at making Zuckerbucks-style private grants illegal. In other words, if somebody wants to pay to “fortify” an election they could make a donation to the Secretary of State’s office and the funds would then be used systematically on a statewide basis – but a private actor who wants to dump money on, say, Orleans Parish but not St. Tammany Parish would not be allowed to do so.

This makes perfect sense, and therefore it’s no surprise that Miguez’ bills have been vetoed.

The fight against private funding of public elections is going on around the country. It looks as if Louisiana might be on the leading edge of it.