Abuse of Power

“It's really creating two Americas,” says Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause. “One where your vote is attempted to be suppressed and one where you’re being provided with more access to the ballot.” ... “This is designed specifically to make sure that many of the absentee ballots that are cast will not be counted simply because they didn't get there in time or were not returned properly,” explains Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. “The calculation in Wisconsin by the Republicans is that more Democrats vote by absentee ballot overall than Republicans so they view it in their interests to be able to restrict how absentee ballots are returned. By getting rid of all the drop boxes, their calculation is that this will help them.”

Donald Trump remains a clear and present danger to our democracy. The January 6th Select Committee is right to subpoena the former President. But the Committee has shown clearly that the then-President violated his oath of office and committed crimes for which he must be held accountable.

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections with Common Cause, said voter advocacy groups are prepared to intervene should partisan actors interfere with certification without justification or if a secretary of state refuses to seek a court order compelling a local board to act. “That is why we are here, and there will be lot of advocates and lawyers willing and able to step in and file if the secretary is not interested in using their authority or their position to ensure that the votes of their constituents are counted,” Albert said.

The court’s decision in Rucho v. Common Cause barred federal court challenges to partisan gerrymanders. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said it was not an issue for the federal judiciary to decide, but emphasized the ruling did not “condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void.” In fact, the issue was being actively addressed at the state level, Roberts wrote. He cited Florida’s amendment and one of Pariente’s opinions. Responding to liberal justices who wanted to reject Rucho’s map as an unconstitutional gerrymander, Roberts wrote they could not because “there is no ‘Fair Districts Amendment’ to the Federal Constitution.”

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the Texas chapter of the watchdog group Common Cause, said the showing of the film by Paxton’s office is particularly concerning because of Paxton’s longstanding embrace of unfounded voter fraud conspiracies — and his role in prosecuting electoral crimes, which are exceedingly rare. (Since 2005, the Texas Attorney General’s website says the office has prosecuted 155 people for 534 election fraud offenses — good for about 0.0048% of the 11.1 million Texas votes cast in the 2020 presidential contest alone, and not even a rounding error’s worth of all votes cast in the state over the last 17 years.) “Paxton hosting a watch party for this completely debunked work of fiction is next-level disinformation,” Gutierrez said. “It’s not like (Paxton) is a person who has no impact on elections — he is constantly doing things to impact elections. … It’s all kinds of alarming and sets off all the red flags.”

The attacks on access have targeted methods disproportionately used by people of color and younger, more Democratic-leaning voters. “These are direct attacks on voters that legislators think will vote for the other party,” said Sylvia Albert of Common Cause. “It is clearly an attack on Black and brown and low-income voters.”