Voting & Elections

Today, the voice of the American people was heard above the cacophony of lies and disinformation and through the flurry of meritless lawsuits filed around the country seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Electoral College did its job and cast its ballots to reflect the will of the American people. As required by federal law, presidential electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia cast their votes for President-elect Biden, who earned 306 Electoral College votes, and Donald Trump, who earned 232 Electoral College votes. With the vote of Michigan’s electors this afternoon, all of the states that were subjected to baseless lawsuits in recent weeks have now had their electoral votes cast to reflect the will of the voters in those states.

Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan fair-elections advocate, trained and dispatched more than 1,000 volunteers to polling places in 22 counties. Volunteers were asked to report any sightings of voter intimidation or harassment through a group communication app at the end of their shifts. A spokeswoman for the organization said no incidents were reported.

“What we’re seeing in a number of states are clear attempts to either roll back expansions of access to the ballot or add more suppressive measures,” said Sylvia Albert, who runs the voting and elections program at Common Cause.  “What’s happening here is legislatures using propaganda to make changes to election law. Changes to election law should be made very deliberately in concert with election officials in the states, with election experts, with nonpartisan advocacy groups, with security experts,” Albert said. “They are using the president’s rhetoric and all of the undermining of the election as an excuse, and I say excuse because there are no facts to back up what they are saying.”

November is officially in the rear-view mirror, but the election is still in the headlines, and we’re being forced to look back. Why? The will of the people of Pennsylvania is clear and the election outcome will not change. Pennsylvanians turned out in record numbers to vote in this election. Over 6.9 million — or 70.9% — of voting-age Pennsylvanians cast their ballot. Black and brown leaders, organizers, and voters made a herculean effort to ensure that every eligible voter could vote, and every vote was counted. To call the election results into question is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize participation in democracy, especially by Black voters. Here in the commonwealth, we pick our leaders. Our leaders do not pick and choose which voices to listen to and which ones to silence. We have spoken. We’ve elected our next president.

In an interview with S. V. Date, of HuffPost, Paul S. Ryan, a campaign-finance lawyer at the watchdog group Common Cause, used more colloquial language. “It’ll be a slush fund,” he said. Whereas the rules governing campaign pacs are fairly strict, the rules for leadership pacs are scandalously lax. OpenSecrets notes that some politicians use such funds to make campaign donations to other candidates in their party. Trump could end up doing this, too, but he also has many other options, including directing some of the donations to himself and his children. “Trump could decide to pay himself $1 million a year out of this fund,” Ryan noted. “That’s legal. He could pay Don Jr. and Ivanka, if he wanted to.”

Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at the watchdog group Common Cause, said Barr’s comments that the DOJ was unable to find substantive evidence of fraud could potentially put him in Trump’s crosshairs.    “The president seems to fire anybody who states a fact that he does not agree with,” Albert said.   In its assessment of the November 3 election, Common Cause said it had uncovered instances of routine Election Day problems such as malfunctioning machines and long lines but no evidence of fraud.    Albert criticized Barr for toeing Trump’s line on voter fraud before belatedly stating the obvious.     “The attorney general has for the past month continued to help the president undermine people's confidence in the election, so I'm not going to give him a prize for telling the truth when he's told it a month late,” Albert said in an interview with VOA.