Voting & Elections

The Manafort and Cohen cases are also a disturbing reminder of how differently Americans are treated by our criminal justice system depending on their skin color, wealth and status. Earlier this year, a black woman in Texas was sentenced to five years in prison for unwittingly breaking state law by voting while still under community supervision for a previous fraud charge.

The Trump Administration has confirmed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that it has fulfilled its agreement to delete the state voter data that was unlawfully obtained by Trump’s Pence-Kobach Commission -- the very relief sought in a suit brought by Democracy Forward on behalf of its clients Common Cause and individual voters Jan Cantler, Anthony Gutierrez, Thomas Kennedy and Ellen Nakhnikian. The lawsuit was filed last year against the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, its Vice Chair Kris Kobach, and the Department of Homeland Security to prevent them from violating the Privacy Act and engaging in other unlawful conduct.

“Although North Carolina’s loud and proud admission that legislators drew districts for partisan advantage is unusual, the practice is universal when politicians are in charge,” said Kathay Feng, Common Cause national redistricting director. “Until we prohibit partisan gerrymandering, a true representative democracy will remain out of reach, and the voices of all Americans will continue to be silent.”

“Although North Carolina’s loud and proud admission that legislators drew districts for partisan advantage is unusual, the practice is universal when politicians are in charge,” Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director at Common Cause, which brought the suit on behalf of the North Carolina voters, said in a statement. “Until we prohibit partisan gerrymandering, a true representative democracy will remain out of reach and the voices of all Americans will continue to be silent.”

A three-judge federal district court panel in North Carolina again ruled in Common Cause v. Rucho that the North Carolina General Assembly violated the U.S. Constitution in 2016 when legislators manipulated congressional districts for partisan advantage. The panel reached the same conclusion in January, but the Supreme Court of the United States vacated and remanded the decision this June following its decision in Gill v. Whitford. The Justices asked the trial court panel to reexamine whether plaintiffs had standing to sue. The panel confirmed standing and the original finding of constitutional violations in today’s decision. The North Carolina General Assembly is likely to appeal the decision. Appeals of three-judge panel redistricting decisions go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, so the case could be heard there in the next year.

Voting is one of the fundamental ways Americans can make their voices heard in our democracy. But too often, the process of registering to vote can be tricky, confusing, and complicated. That’s one of the reasons why Common Cause has a nationwide campaign to push for a new innovative reform to make the process of voter registration more convenient and secure. It’s called automatic voter registration (AVR).