Election Protection

Today, not one, but two teams of investigative journalists released major stories with some big political news – and it isn’t Common Cause or our allies who they investigated. Add to that the District Attorney in Wake County, North Carolina, who has opened a preliminary review into the same subject and it is clear, no one affiliated with Common Cause or our allies have done anything wrong. 

"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 told Newsweek that McConnell has been instrumental in blocking the current Congress from enacting laws. "There have been hundreds that have been passed by the House at this point. There have only been 158 enacted laws by this 116th Congress to this point. Yet there are hundreds of bills that have passed the House but continue to sit in Senate Majority Leader McConnell's desk, or his 'legislative graveyard' as it's been called," he said.

Turning Point USA’s Arizona troll farm takes a page from the Russian disinformation playbook from the 2016 presidential race and is likely only the tip of the iceberg. The effort is a direct attack on voters and our democracy, and is a reminder that disinformation that suppresses the vote doesn’t just come from Russia or other hostile foreign powers, or in the form of microtargeted ads. The majority of disinformation that we’ve identified through the Stopping Cyber Suppression program throughout this year’s primary elections has been “organic content” -- not ads, but posts exactly like the ones described in The Washington Post.

"Over the past number of years, there's been significant evidence documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report and numerous other places, including the 17 intelligence agencies, that Russia infiltrated our elections in the 2016 race and was continuing to do that throughout not only the 2018 elections, but also into the 2020 election," Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at the government watchdog group Common Cause, told Salon. "And so it's no surprise at all that this new evidence was revealed recently about their involvement in trying to hack the Biden campaign."

Today, Common Cause called on Congress to prioritize funding for key elements of our democracy in the next COVID-19 emergency supplemental appropriations bill (“CARES 2.0”). The letter urges every Member of Congress to designate sufficient funding in the stimulus package to secure essential pillars of our democracy threatened by the pandemic and to ensure proper safeguards are put into place to oversee government disbursement of trillions of dollars in stimulus funds. The elements highlighted in the letter include critical efforts to safeguard our elections, the Census, the U.S. Postal Service, access to broadband internet service, as well as local journalism and to fully staff and prioritize the CARES Act Congressional Oversight Commission.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) joined Common Cause experts and members, and journalists in a town hall webinar to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this year’s elections and the preparations that must be made, and precautions taken, to safeguard our democracy.