Vote-By-Mail

“It’s going to be harder for people to vote,” said Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for Common Cause, which advocates for expanded voter access. “It means that states have to put more money and time and energy into educating the voting population in how to go about being able to vote in spite of these burdens.”

Say the legislation “is the bold, comprehensive bill we need because the threats to our democracy are deep, systemic, and wide-ranging”

It’s not “particularly sexy,” Sylvia Albert, director of Voting and Elections for Common Cause, said of ballot curing. But when you add it to other legislative changes, “we provide access across the board and give people options,” Albert said.

"Florida's Republican legislative leaders seem determined to weaken the system that voters have relied on, without significant problems, for the better part of a generation," Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for good-government watchdog Common Cause, said in a statement on April 28 after Florida's House passed the bill.

Unlike Delaware’s restrictions, Rhode Island’s voter-ID law can’t be described as antiquated: The statute is just 10 years old and won adoption under a Democratic majority with support from powerful Black elected leaders. “It was bizarro,” said John Marion, the executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, the state affiliate of the national government-watchdog group. “Ten years later, I still don’t know how it happened.”

By and large, bills to expand mail-in voting and voter registration are passing in states that have Democratic legislative majorities and Democratic governors, said Sylvia Albert, the national voting and elections director for Common Cause, a national nonprofit that favors expanded voting options and has joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn Georgia’s new restrictions.