Stephen Spaulding, vice president of policy for the nonprofit Common Cause, said gambling on elections is bad for democracy.

"You can imagine wealthy gamblers could make significant money by exploiting disinformation to influence an electoral outcome that would protect the bettors' bottom line," Spaulding pointed out. "This again opens up a significant risk to the perception that the winners and losers of an election are not determined by voters, but by those who stand to gain financially."

Spaulding noted the...

“Doing a convention puts every civil right we have in this country at risk,” said Viki Harrison, Director of Constitutional Conventions and Protecting Dissent Programs for left-of-center watchdog group Common Cause in an interview with The Center Square. “The entire Constitution could be rewritten.”

“The amendment process is a lot more in the open,” Harrison said. “You're going through the state legislatures where people can testify. You are going through Congress where people can interact with their legislators...

“We’re very hopeful that what came out in Alabama will bode well for Florida,” said Kathay Feng, vice president of programs for Common Cause, one of the plaintiffs in the federal court challenge set for next month in Tallahassee.

Feng said justices signaled that the “Voting Rights Act is not dead.”

Tuesday’s meeting was the sixth in a series of 19 statewide town halls sponsored by the good-government advocacy group Common Cause North Carolina.

Several years ago in Raleigh, Moral Mondays protesters descended on the Legislative Building to protest the legislature’s actions. That movement faded during the COVID pandemic. Now Common Cause is seeking to rally people where they live.

Gino Nuzzolillo, a 25-year-old staffer at Common Cause, conceived the town hall series and led the one at Gibsonville. “We...

The executive director of Common Cause Ohio, Catherine Turcer, noted that the 1912 constitutional convention that birthed the current amendment provisions sought to check a corrupt and unaccountable government.

Now, in the wake of perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in state government history — the racketeering conviction of the former House speaker Larry L. Householder for accepting $60 million in bribes — “the State Legislature should choose to actually make changes that create greater transparency and greater...

Marilyn Carpinteyro, Common Cause interim co-president

"No American is above the law – not even former presidents. The charges that a federal grand jury leveled today against former President Donald Trump are profoundly serious and must go to trial. The charges themselves are unprecedented, but so are the events that led to them.”

"Paper ballots marked by the voter — which New York currently uses — is the election security gold ... standard," said Sarah Goff, deputy director of Common Cause New York, on Tuesday. Adding a new machine, she said, comes off as "solving a problem we don't have in New York."

Linda Meigs, a political activist from Charlotte, drove to Ms. Cotham's district this month for a meeting with local lawmakers hosted by Common Cause North Carolina and other liberal advocacy groups.

Ms. Meigs said she had come prepared to confront Ms. Cotham over how she could have campaigned on ''Democratic Party values such as women's rights to reproductive freedom and L.G.B.T.Q. rights,'' only to reverse her support. Ms. Cotham was invited to speak, but didn't attend.

''When I'm talking to somebody and asking...

"What I worry about in the general sense is you want to think that proposals and legislation comes from the people who are electing the folks representing them in the legislature and that there is some kind of local initiative for that," said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause NC. "But when you have a bill mill that really is serving the interests of special interests in corporate America and right-of-center agendas, that's alarming."

However, Stephen Spaulding, vice president for policy at the group Common Cause, said this would put even more pressure on the health of democracy in current political environment.

"This opens up a significant risk to the perception that the winners and losers of an election are not determined by voters, but by those who stand to gain financially," he said.

Common Cause has sent a filing to the commission, asking that it reject the proposal. Leadership with the House Task Force on Strengthening Democracy issued a...