Miles Parks for NPR:

For voting officials, money from the private sector leading up to the 2020 election was a lifeline.

In Philadelphia, the city was able to buy new high-speed machines to help sort mail ballots by ward and precinct, thanks to the roughly $10 million it received in donated funds.

In Coconino County, Ariz., the money paid for temporary staff to assist Native American voters to register and vote. In Chester County, Pa., it paid for body cameras for election workers picking up mail ballots from drop boxes.

But a year and a half later, that lifeline has also spawned a slew of conspiracies, and efforts in dozens of states to ban the kind of financial help local election officials say saved them.

The pandemic was killing more than 1,000 people per day that fall, and the risks it posed made voting exponentially more expensive as officials hurried to implement mail options and make in-person precincts safer.

But Congress didn’t allocate more money to help make the general election happen, after an initial allotment during the primaries. That left local election officials desperate for other funding sources.

“I know the benefit that that [private] funding provided,” said Al Schmidt, a Republican former election commissioner in Philadelphia. “And I cannot comprehend what a mess the 2020 election would have been if we did not have the equipment that we were able to purchase.”Sponsor Message

But for many Republican legislators across the country, using private money to run a government operation was unacceptable. And now, in many states, it won’t happen again.

Since voting ended in 2020, more than a dozen states — all with Republican-controlled state legislatures — have enacted laws that prevent local election officials from accepting donations like they did leading up to that election. In at least five other states, Republican legislatures have tried to do the same, but they have been blocked by the vetoes of Democratic governors.