Voting & Elections

Automatic voter registration, as a policy, has captured the attention of U.S. lawmakers and democracy advocates. Building on the legacy of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, AVR has revitalized the ideal that voting in America should be a right — one that our government guarantees and facilitates, while ensuring a safeguarded system that we can all have faith in.

On Thursday, Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn said in a release that documents revealed “that the plan to add the citizenship question was hatched by the Republicans’ chief redistricting mastermind to create an electoral advantage for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” She said the documents contradict testimony by administration officials that they sought to add the question to benefit Latino voters.

Common Cause, which first obtained the hard drives, said the revelations on them were a wake-up call to supporters of the American system. “Now that the plan has been revealed, it’s important for all of us — the courts, leaders and the people — to stand up for a democracy that incudes every voice,” said Kathay Feng, the group’s national redistricting director.

Previously undisclosed documents obtained by Common Cause in its North Carolina partisan gerrymandering lawsuit were filed today in the federal action challenging the addition a citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census. The documents, which were filed by the private plaintiffs in Department of Commerce v. State of New York, reveal for the first time the secret role played by the longtime Republican redistricting expert, the late Dr. Thomas Hofeller, in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question and the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Act rationale for it. The documents further show that Dr. Hofeller concluded in a 2015 study that the citizenship question would significantly harm the political power of Latino communities and be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”   

Today, Common Cause called for immediate oversight hearings on reports that the Trump Administration is shifting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff from its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to the border with Mexico. In letters to the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Common Cause urged Congress to ensure that DHS and all government agencies continue to devote necessary staff and resources to protect our election infrastructure in the wake of well-documented and continuing attacks on our election infrastructure by Russia and other hostile foreign nations.