COVID-19

It is time for a unified call from all stakeholders to ensure elected officials meet this demand for safe, accessible voting. We certainly need to hear the powerful voice of America’s business community.  U.S. corporations, after all, have a strong stake in maintaining America’s long history of political stability — truly at risk this year — because it guarantees the business climate which has made ours the world’s largest economy. Wealthy corporations, who can afford to pour seemingly limitless sums into the electoral process, have long had an inside advantage when it comes to influencing Congress.

John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said the organization is “thrilled that the Supreme Court agreed not to stay the consent decree. Because of this order hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island voters will be able to safely cast their ballots without risking their health.”

“These problems have always existed. They have just been limited to mostly low-income Black and Brown voters,” said Sylvia Albert, Director of Voting and Elections at pro-democracy organization Common Cause. “That population [of people being evicted] has ballooned in the current crisis, and what it exposes is how some parts of our system are not responsive to the needs of the voters.” ... The additional hurdles of a pandemic and an eviction crisis haven’t discouraged people’s interest in voting, Albert said.  “In reaction to the pandemic and the actions of the administration, people feel very strongly one way or another, and it has made them engage more passionately,” she said. “All we need to do now is make sure they have the access.”

“States are already strapped for cash,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, said Tuesday. “At a time when the Congress has not appropriated sufficient funds to help election officials run these elections this November, it’s ridiculous to contemplate adding more to their budgets.”

Today, Common Cause amended its challenge to President Trump’s memorandum requiring the exclusion of undocumented people from being counted in the census for congressional apportionment, adding new co-plaintiffs and new causes of action. The amended complaint in Common Cause v. Trump now includes the City of Dayton, Ohio; the City of Portland, Oregon, five new organizational plaintiffs, and a total of sixteen (16) additional individual plaintiffs of diverse backgrounds from California, Texas, and New Jersey (in addition to preexisting individual plaintiffs from Florida and New York). 

Government watchdog groups have called Trump’s move an act of executive overreach that usurps Congress’ constitutional power to allocate federal funds. “Americans expect and deserve more from their President in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement. “Unwilling and unable to negotiate with Congress to deliver a relief package to a nation reeling from COVID-19, President Trump resorted to unconstitutional half measures that will do little to address the serious issues facing the nation.”