Voting & Elections

"No voter should have to factor the likelihood of getting investigated into their calculation of whether and how to vote. No one should face felony prosecution for helping three friends by taking their ballots to the post office," Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, said in a statement in late February. "Our 'government by the people' is stronger and more representative when more people vote."

Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a group defending the state's new districts, called Monday's action a victory. "We're pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the legislative defendants' shameless attempt to impose their gerrymandered congressional map upon North Carolina," Phillips said.

“If we can say only legislatures are able to make laws regarding the time, place, manner of elections, and courts don’t have any ability to change or constrain those laws, we’re really looking at a significant change in the balance of power between the three branches of state governments, as well as the level of intervention from federal courts in state lawmaking,” said Suzanne Almeida, redistricting counsel for Common Cause, a nonpartisan nonprofit involved in both the North Carolina and Pennsylvania cases.

"They're making it very difficult for people to access services that should be a right that people have," said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia. "Trying to put a veil over it doesn't help anything."

"We saw vote-by-mail applications and ballots rejected at unprecedented rates, poll sites opening late or not opening at all due to election worker shortages, and widespread technology issues," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. Calling for federal action, Gutierrez said it won't get any easier for Texas or other states: "These issues we’re seeing today will be far bigger problems in November when we have exponentially more people showing up to the polls."

"The elimination of state autonomy is inconsistent with the historical practice and the intent of the Election Clause and invites the risk that federal courts will wrongly interpret state law -- a significant risk given the difficulty federal courts have in mastering 50 different States' laws," Allison Riggs, a lawyer for Common Cause, argued in court papers. She said to accept the Republicans' argument "that partisan gerrymandering claims are immune from state constitutional scrutiny by state courts would require this Court to overrule a century of precedent." "It would lead to an unprecedented upheaval of current election law and foreclose any legal relief for voters from extreme legislation, which state courts already found to be undemocratic," Riggs said in an interview.