Voting & Elections

“When you’re with your family and friends this Thanksgiving, remind everyone to make a plan of how they’ll cast a ballot in the U.S. Senate race,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director for Common Cause Georgia. “These close races come down to 1% margins, and you could be the 1% that moves Georgia forward.”

Good-government groups such as Common Cause have been going after gerrymanders in both Democratic and Republican states for some time. The Supreme Court, in a 2019 case, held that federal courts can’t hear claims of partisan gerrymandering. The Court said that there’s just no standard to apply, and so federal courts are closed—there are other ways of dealing with these problems. Some states have created redistricting commissions; others have state courts that have policed partisan gerrymandering. That’s what happened in Moore v. Harper. After Common Cause lost in the U.S. Supreme Court, the group argued before the state Supreme Court in North Carolina that partisan gerrymandering violates the state constitution, and they won on that claim. The state Supreme Court ordered North Carolina to redraw its districts, to make them a little fairer in a state that is pretty evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

We’ve learned from this year’s midterms that social media companies are still not up to the task of addressing election disinformation in a timely and consistent way.

Generally, turnout considers “the number of registered voters who actually get to the polls or send in their mail-in ballots,” said Khalif Ali of Common Cause Pennsylvania. ... The delays happen, in part, because Pennsylvania is one of nine states that forbids election workers from processing ballots before Election Day. The state’s Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature haven’t been able to agree on a bill to change that. Most other U.S. states, including Florida, New Jersey and Wyoming, do allow ballots to be processed pre-election. “Since we don't have that, then what is required of us is patience,” said Common Cause’s Ali. “I'm more concerned about an accurate count than I am a quick count.”

Even when researchers can get through to Twitter, responses are slow—sometimes taking more than a day. Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at the nonprofit Common Cause, says he’s noticed that when his organization reports tweets that clearly violate Twitter’s policies, those posts are now less likely to get taken down.

The bulk of the nearly 3,000 complaints that voters filed this election season with Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group, reflected procedural problems. People having difficulty figuring out where to vote, or whether they were eligible, or how they could correct a problem with their mail-in ballot. People not being told what to do with the printed ballot containing their selections. Or people, particularly in Harris County, arriving at a precinct that had run out of the paper used to print ballots. Any problem that interferes with a voter casting a ballot is an important one, of course. But it wasn't lost on Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez that most of the problems that voters faced had nothing to do with wild conspiracy theories. "We are short on Republicans who will speak out against the election deniers," Gutierrez said. Still, he wondered about the ability to find GOP figures in Texas who would sign on. Indeed, two-thirds of Texas Republicans still do not believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Election deniers made strong runs for office around the country, and the massive layoffs at Twitter and at Facebook's parent company could allow even more disinformation to pour across social media platforms, potentially triggering political violence. Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause, said many of us are like the proverbial frog in the pot of water, growing acclimated to rising heat instead of sensing the danger. "We are now in a pot of boiling water," he said, "and we haven't realized it."