Vote-By-Mail

“This is blatant voter suppression and yet another way the politicians in charge are putting barriers between Texans and the ballot box,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. “With last-minute changes and pending litigation, it is increasingly clear that confusion in Texas elections is part of a pattern of voter suppression.”

Today, Common Cause and the Arab American Institute sent a joint letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates (“CPD”) calling for mechanisms in future debates designed to combat the spread of election disinformation and promote trust in our democratic process. 

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, also noted that fears over mass voter intimidation efforts in past years have not materialized, even when Trump urged supporters to go to the polls in 2016. “He likes the chaos, he wants to create chaos, because he thinks it benefits him,” Albert said. ‘We don't want to give him what he wants, which is fear and intimidation and chaos.”

President Trump further attempted to confuse voters and undermine the integrity of our elections tonight. Instead of encouraging people to participate in the political process, he continued to spread lies to try to delegitimize the election results. Voters should know the truth: voting by mail is a secure, tried, and tested process with checks, balances, and safeguards. 

“This could be 2000′s hanging chad in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of the state chapter of the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause. “Potential challenges, delays in results, questions on which ballots count and who counts them — there are just a lot of questions, and that could open up Pennsylvania to a lot of uncertainty.” The group is working with election officials statewide, emphasizing clear and consistent guidelines for dealing with questionable marks, such as when a voter circles a name or uses an X or a checkmark rather than filling in the oval — or even crosses out one selection and marks a second.

“The federal judiciary is not being a great avenue for relief,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a nonpartisan nonprofit. “Some state courts have provided more. And that’s where you’ve seen more orders for expanded access.” ... The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling extending the ballot receipt deadline could be the first case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court. Normally, decisions made by a state’s highest court are the last word on election matters. “What this appeal is saying is that that state court got it so wrong that it can’t stand,” said Albert, adding, “That’s unusual.”