Voting Rights

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia challenging voting restrictions enacted since the 2020 election that federal authorities allege discriminate against Black Americans. The suit challenges Georgia’s so-called “Election Integrity Act,” which was passed in March by the Republican majority in the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp. The law imposes new limits on the use of absentee ballots, gives the legislature greater control over elections in the state, and makes it a crime for outside groups to provide food and water to voters waiting at polling stations.

"These election workers are feeling the brunt of former President Trump and various Republican allies lying about the election," said Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for the government watchdog group Common Cause. "All of a sudden, these election workers are part of some vast conspiracy." Albert says that what election officials have described represents "a level of threat and intimidation against election officials that you just don't see in a democracy." "We're seeing election officials receive death threats, they've been doxed, they're in hiding," Albert said. The prospect of experienced election workers resigning from these already "thankless jobs," as Albert described them, raises an even more troubling question: Who will replace them?

Tonight, there were no surprises in the opening act of the push to pass the For the People Act in the United States Senate. But grassroots momentum continues to build in a fight that will go on all summer as we continue to make the case to the American people and their representatives in Washington that this legislation must be passed to expand the freedom to vote, break the grip of big money in politics, end gerrymandering, and crack down on corruption.  

“Our summer of mobilization and grassroots actions to pass this bill will continue. Democracy will prevail. Failure is not an option,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of government watchdog Common Cause, said in a statement.

Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel with Common Cause, said Tuesday’s vote is “the first step in a concerted summer-long fight to get this bill across the finish line.” “It’s by no means over tomorrow,” he said.

Today, Common Cause urged every member of the U.S. Senate to vote “yes” to advance the For the People Act in a vote expected later this week. The letter notes that Common Cause plans to score this vote in the next version of our Democracy Scorecard which we send to our 1.5 million members. The pro-voter, anti-corruption bill contains the most comprehensive set of democracy reforms to be introduced in Congress since the post-Watergate reforms were passed in the 1970s. The letter emphasizes that our democracy faces a crisis in the wake of insurrectionists storming the Capitol and hundreds of GOP voter suppression bills – largely targeting Black and Brown Americans - introduced in state legislatures since Republicans lost the White House and control of the Senate in the November election. It points to the fact that at least 14 states have already passed nearly two dozen restrictive voting bills already this year.