"It's illegal in every state to harass or intimidate a voter away from voting," said Suzanne Almeida, interim executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania. "There are specific rules in the election code about not standing in the way of a voter and their franchise, and so poll watchers can't do that either."

“In Virginia, the safe zone around the polling location is only 40 feet, but that safe zone is for campaigning and trying to change a person’s vote,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group. “Outside of that, in general, there are laws against intimidation. So I would say that even if they have a right to campaign, which they absolutely do, they do not have a right to interfere with someone’s right to vote or to intimidate them.”

“To me, this went beyond...

"The House of Representatives passed nearly 10 democracy reform bills, often with bipartisan support, this session, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked debate and markups on all of these bills and refused to allow a vote," Common Cause's director of legislative affairs, Aaron Scherb, said.

The 2020 Democracy Scorecard, one of the group's initiatives, provides data on every current member of the House of Representatives and Senate, including their votes and co-sponsorships of democracy reform bills.

Scherb...

Citing all the disarray in Georgia’s elections this year, public interest groups wonder whether it was an accident. “Secretary Raffensperger has been looking for reasons to cast doubt on Georgia’s mail-in ballot system for months,” said Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia. “He would have served us all better if he had invested that time and energy into preventing the problems that occurred in June.”

Solution: Congress should pass a new coronavirus relief bill that includes $3.6 billion for states to administer elections. With increased resources, states can begin to recruit, hire more workers at a higher wage and organize mass trainings. Local governments should try to find new kinds of poll workers: colleges could give their students credit, employers could provide paid time off and local governments could assign employees to the polls. Companies could help, too. Which sports team will award season tickets to a poll worker? Which...

One organization, Common Cause Georgia, expressed concern about Mr. Raffensperger’s announcement. The group issued a statement accusing him of fanning fears about election integrity by “looking for reasons to cast doubt on Georgia’s mail-in ballot system.”

“We wholeheartedly agree that people who intentionally vote twice should be subject to the usual criminal penalties for election law violations,” said the statement by Aunna Dennis, the organization’s executive director. “But we are concerned that voters who...

Acknowledging problems in the Massachusetts election, Pamela Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, nevertheless attributed the high primary turnout to the state’s shift toward voting by mail.

“Compared to the problems we’ve seen in other states, it really was a relatively smaller percentage of the voters that faced these issues,” she said, adding that Massachusetts had benefited from a decline in coronavirus infection rates. Partly as a result, she said, “we did not experience a poll worker...

"You need to cement districts ahead of time, so candidates know where they're running, said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director at Common Cause, a government watchdog organization. 

Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a watchdog group, said the main issue big companies need to tackle is not getting their employees to vote but to work the polls.

"The reality is that the government has been unable to really secure poll workers on a national scale," Albert said.

"People just don't think about it. They go to vote and there's the same person there that was there the last time they went to vote. But when you tell people, you being there can actually ensure that...

“He’s either violating the reporting requirements or doesn’t anticipate to spend $100,000 or more on his presidential campaign, and the latter part seems unlikely,” said Paul S. Ryan, the head of litigation at the good government group Common Cause. “He’s missed an FEC reporting deadline on August 20 and is in [likely] violation of the law.” ...

But if West simply refused to comply, the FEC would have to step in and actually vote to bring him to court. Since Trump has failed to nominate enough people for a quorum...