Abuse of Power

“This bill will enable security for incumbency,” Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told me. “It really tramples the person who wants to be the community change agent from becoming an elected official through the legislature, because it’s allowing big donors to create war chests for incumbents.”

Change is long overdue to a system that has delivered unequal justice to far too many in our state for far too long. In the year since the tragic murder of George Floyd, we have seen the conviction of Mr. Floyd’s murderer, but Minnesotans are still waiting for justice. Minnesotans deserve real reforms to prevent what happened to Mr. Floyd, and others, from ever happening again. Our legislative leaders must make commonsense policing reforms a top priority and they must not come up short again.

Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for the voter access advocacy group Common Cause, said curtailing ballot collections would hurt those living in rural areas, native communities, nursing homes, colleges and anyone who lives far from polling sites or doesn’t have the economic means to get there. “Just like everything else, these kinds of illusions and lies about there being problems are being used to suppress access to the ballot for millions of Americans,” she said, referencing the national GOP push to rollback voting rights. “When we don’t allow for access for everyone we’re letting legislators choose their voters, as opposed to letting the voters choose the legislators.”

Common Cause is urging every member of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote “yes” on a bill to establish a 9/11-style commission to investigate the violent attack January 6th on the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The letter notes that Common Cause plans to key-vote final passage of H.R. 3233 to create the “National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex” (H.R. 3233) in our next Democracy Scorecard, which we send to our 1.5 million members.

Today Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the Census FACTS Act to ensure that future censuses do not see the unprecedented level of political malfeasance and politicalization that plagued the 2020 Census count.  The Census Federal Advisory Committee on Transparency and Standards (Census FACTS) Act charges Congress and President Biden to create an expert, nonpartisan committee to identify the specific problems encountered during the 2020 Census -- including political interference by the Trump Administration; the COVID-19 pandemic; and the level of transparency, public participation, and responsiveness on the part of the Census Bureau in making its policy decisions. In highlighting these problems and making recommendations to fix them, the committee established by the Census FACTS Act would help to restore the public confidence in the Census Bureau. Separately, the bill also clarifies the Reapportionment Act of 1929 to ensure that total population is used in Congressional redistricting.

Sylvia Albert, Common Cause Director of Voting & Elections, discusses The For the People Act on ABC News Live the day before the bill was scheduled for markup in the Senate Rules Committee.