(Washington, DC) –Today, a coalition of nearly 50 organizations and media scholars joined Common Cause, PEN America, and Free Press in a letter calling on Congress to include vital funding for local news in the next stimulus package proposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter explains that House and Senate leadership should consider local press an industry vital to the nation’s health, prosperity, and recovery.

Just days before the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual meeting in Austin, Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy released a new report uncovering the recent influence of the secretive special interest lobbying group in the Texas legislature.

Today, GateHouse Media and Gannett Co. announced plans to merge to form an unprecedented newspaper conglomerate. The $1.4 billion deal would combine the two largest newspaper chains, creating the largest newspaper publisher in the United States. A combined GateHouse-Gannett entity would own one in every six newspapers in the nation and control over 100 local news operations.

Hofeller evidence filed in Maryland lawsuit challenging census citizenship question.

Governor Brian Kemp today signed into law HB 392, which has a provision requiring Georgia’s secretary of state to take steps to shore up the security of the state’s voter registration database. The move comes just weeks after Gov. Kemp signed HB 316, which included new protections for Georgia voters who are required to cast provisional ballots. These bills were passed in direct response to a lawsuit brought on behalf of Common Cause Georgia by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, along with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton,...

Today, leading experts in the field of election security released a report outlining the serious and unaddressed threat to the integrity of the nation’s elections and democracy posed by the continued use of online voting in 32 states. The report highlights that at the very least nearly 100,000 ballots were reported to have been cast online in the 2016 general election. The report, “Email and Internet Voting: The Overlooked Threat to Election Security,” examines the threats faced by various forms of online voting including blockchain...

With Election Day now less than two months away, Common Cause released its 2018 Democracy Scorecard to chart the positions of every Member of Congress on issues vital to the health of our democracy. The reforms in question range from legislation to create a small donor matching fund system and increased disclosure requirements for outside political groups to bills to curb gerrymandering and strengthen the protections in the Voting Rights Act.

Just days before the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual meeting in New Orleans, Common Cause released a new report uncovering the recent influence of the secretive special interest lobbying group in the Louisiana legislature.

As 2018 congressional races heat up, Common Cause is once again tracking the positions of every Member of Congress on issues vital to the health of our democracy. Members of the House and Senate have received letters asking them to co-sponsor and support more than a dozen democracy reform bills and informing them that their co-sponsorship record will be published to our 1.1 million members during the lead-up to Election Day in Common Cause’s “Democracy Scorecard.”