Voting & Elections

A new investigation by Common Cause’s disinformation analysts has revealed that social media giants Facebook and Twitter seem to have backed away from enforcement of their own policies and enforcement practices when it comes to combatting election-related disinformation. The white paper, “Trending in the Wrong Direction: Social Media Platforms’ Declining Enforcement of Voting Disinformation,” reveals that the social media platforms appear to have dramatically scaled-back their practices of removing or labeling dangerously false claims concerning widespread voter fraud.

“We’ve had a very functional system of election administration,” said Common Cause Ohio Executive Director Catherine Turcer, adding, “It is genuinely surprising that after a successful election where more Ohio voters participated than ever before, that any legislator would think about making it harder to vote.” ... Turcer, of Common Cause Ohio, said voters’ confidence would grow if they understood the election rules already in place. “The distrust of election officials and election administration has run really deep, and we need to do a good job of educating people about how elections work and what kind of security measures we have,” she said. “We shouldn’t assume that wrong things are being done. We should all go into it asking good questions but waiting to understand how it actually works.”

"It appears that they would like to take over the county board of elections," Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said in an interview with Salon, calling the move part of a "coordinated strategy" that represents Republican "opposition to, basically, democracy." Dennis also warned that "whatever happens in Fulton is going to domino across the state" and that if this approach is successful for Republicans, other states with GOP-majority legislatures could soon follow. "This would become a domino effect across many states," she said. "If it happens in Georgia, people should definitely be looking out to see if major counties, and definitely progressive counties or cities who have large voting populations, will be targets as well."

“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.”

“When you go back and read the Shelby County decision, it didn’t actually strike down the concept of preclearance itself,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, which supports the legislation. Instead, it struck down the formula to determine which states had to get preclearance, he added. The court said the previous system was outdated. The bill would also subject certain proposed laws to preclearance, even potentially in jurisdictions that would not otherwise fall under the 25-year lookback criteria.  The bill’s Section 6 would set out several practices, including changes to voter identification needed to vote and maintenance of voter rolls, that could be subject to preclearance. “All those that have been shown to be discriminatory would need to be precleared,” Spaulding said.