Voting & Elections

Allegra Chapman of Common Cause and Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation discuss the House Democratic Election Reform Bill with host Steve Scully on C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

“Now I’m elected, now I’m in, I got the power to draft, lobby and shape the laws that govern the United States of America. Fabulous,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Now, is there any hard limit that I have in terms of what legislation I’m allowed to touch…based on the special interests funds that I accepted?” “There’s no limit,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause. Ocasio-Cortzed continued, “I can be totally funded by oil and gas, totally funded by big pharma and come in and write pharma laws?” “That’s right,” Hobert Flynn said. Wrapping up, Ocasio-Cortez then added, “We have a system that is fundamentally broken.”

"Mr. Whitley has no business being involved with elections, much less serving as Texas' chief election officer," Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, said in a written statement. Common Cause is among the groups that have asked Whitley to withdraw his office's Jan. 25 advisory. "This 'voter purge' was poorly thought out, incompetently implemented and definitely seems to have been more about politics than anything else," he said. "At this point, I think purging Mr. Whitley from the secretary of state's office would be the single best thing we could do for voting rights in Texas."

Rachel Maddow talks about how Kansas is experiencing a mini-realignment and it's in part because of the need for real voting and political reform.

“I’m optimistic that if Rhode Island is successful in proving that a precinct-based voting system can be efficiently audited, that other states with similar systems will take the leap,” says John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, who served as the initial force behind the state’s audit requirement. “I wasn’t sure that we’d be able to execute on that and have it go as smooth as it did,” he told the group at the conclusion of the pilot in January. “But,” he added, “I’ve walked away with the confidence that we can.”