Voting & Elections

“They’re not looking to the future and what’s moving around elections and the rest of the states,” said Liza McClenaghan, state chairwoman of Common Cause Florida. “They’re only interested in trying to fix the things from 2018.” That said, McClenaghan is generally supportive of the legislation pushed by Ingoglia and Baxley given the potential significance of every “glitch” in Florida’s election laws.

Today, Fair Elections Center and Pines Bach LLP filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, on behalf of Common Cause in Wisconsin and individual plaintiff Ben Quintero, challenging Wisconsin’s unnecessary requirements for student IDs to qualify as voter ID.

Liza McClenaghan of government watchdog group Common Cause Florida said lawmakers should mandate what are called risk-limiting audits prior to the certification of election results. “This gives more confidence to the election process as observed by the voters,” McClenaghan said.

The partisan intent of the citizenship question is clear and Commerce v. New York presents a new opportunity for the Supreme Court, with newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to show that it is above partisanship. This case, coupled this term with Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek, the challenges to North Carolina’s and Maryland’s outrageous partisan gerrymanders, will give the court ample opportunity to show that it truly not a partisan branch of government.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested recently that the Supreme Court did not need to wade into the issue of partisan gerrymandering because so many states have passed reforms through the citizen initiative process that puts issues directly to voters. What Gorsuch left out is that only 24 states have a such a process. And in many of those states, legislatures are not only trying to make it harder to get issues on the ballot, they’re taking it upon themselves to reject what voters have approved — often by overwhelming majorities.

David Vance, the National Media Strategist at government watchdog organization Common Cause, told Newsweek that the Husted decision had enabled state legislatures to use purges of rolls to suppress voters. "In greenlighting Ohio’s voter roll purges, the Husted ruling has inspired a variety of methods to remove voters from the polls for partisan gain," he said. "The Arizona bill is just the latest example of voter suppression tactics stemming from the Husted decision. It appears to be nothing more than another attempt by politicians to dictate who will vote and who won’t for their own advantage. We should be looking for ways to get more Americans to vote, not making it more difficult for those that do vote to cast their ballots."