Voting & Elections

Such training sessions and the election day actions for which they prepare attendees are less about ensuring integrity in Texas elections than they are about voter intimidation, according to Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nongovernmental organization that works to expand voting rights. While he was unaware of what Pressley’s session was to cover, he said in a phone interview that such groups “seem to be going out of their way to use poll watchers to intimidate or at least harass voters of color in different parts of the states.” Gutierrez pointed to a 2021 video of a Harris County Republican Party presentation in which a man identifying with the county’s Republican Party said that they were trying to recruit an “army” of 10,000 poll workers to fight voter fraud. In the video, the presenter can be seen using a cursor to point to a predominantly white part of Houston. He says that they were looking to recruit people with “the confidence and courage to come down in here” — moving the cursor to predominantly Black and Brown communities — to fight voter fraud. Gutierrez expressed concern over the lack of transparency of Tuesday’s training session in Arlington. “If groups are kicking people out of their training, you have to wonder what they’re training people on,” he said.

Julia Vaughn, who leads government watchdog Common Cause Indiana, similarly asked the committee to instead turn its attention to the BMV. “It seems backwards to attack this by examining the voter’s status. Why not get the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to quit illegally registering people?” she asked.

PHOENIX — Arizona lawmakers have just reached a resolution on a clean fix to the ballot recount issue after months of tense negotiations. The fix, HB2785, corrects a massive problem caused by prior legislation by allowing adequate time for election officials to tally votes after elections conclude. 

Ishan Mehta, media and democracy program director for Common Cause, said the calls in New Hampshire last month represented "only the tip of the iceberg" and warned that "it is critically important that the FCC now use this authority to fine violators and block the telephone companies that carry the calls." Mehta called on Congress to pass the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, which would prohibit the distribution ofdeceptive AI-generated audio, images, or video relating to federal candidates in political ads. "We hope that both the House and the Senate will follow the example of the FCC," said Mehta, "whose Democratic and Republican commissioners recognized the threat posed by AI and came together in a unanimous vote to outlaw robocalls utilizing AI voice-cloning tools."

Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unanimously voted to outlaw robocalls that utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) voice-cloning tools. Long a matter of concern, the issue made national headlines when the technology was utilized to mimic President Biden’s voice in robocalls in the runup to the New Hampshire primary. Those calls are currently under investigation by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office. The FCC ban is effective immediately.

In our nation no one is above the law. Not even former presidents. It is telling that Donald Trump’s lawyer in the Supreme Court today made no effort to assert that his client had not fomented an insurrection. He did not refute that Donald Trump on January 6 directed heavily-armed militants to go the Capitol to “fight like hell” to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election as part of his attempt to deny the will of the people and steal the election.