Voting Rights

“This decision blatantly ignores the will of Florida voters who — more than a decade ago — demanded Fair Districts that protect representation for communities of color,” Amy Keith, the executive director of Common Cause Florida, said in a statement, referring to the state’s Fair Districts Amendment. Keith noted in her statement that the Florida congressional boundaries are also being challenged in federal court in a separate pending case that argues that the map violates the US Constitution. “Our work is not done until all voters can exercise their right to fair representation,” she said.

Since 2020, voters in California and beyond have seen disinformation proliferate and poison our politics more than ever before. Generative artificial intelligence has the power to rapidly intensify this trend for the worse.

Led by Common Cause New York, the group contends the state Board of Elections erred in August when it certified for use the ExpressVote XL, a touch screen machine. The machine allows voters to mark a ballot electronically instead of on paper and ... displays selections on a summary card. Advocates said that's not enough to verify ballots independently, as required by state law. In their lawsuit, the advocates said: "As a voter cannot read a bar code, the voter's ballot is not certifiable. No voter can verify that the bar code accurately reflects the voter's selections shown on the summary card." The advocates want a court to reverse the certification, ... which would mean county boards of election couldn't purchase the ExpressVote XL. In New York, each county purchases its own voting machines, selecting from choices certified by the state.

“This proposal does not do what it needs to do and it does not create additional representation for Black voters,” Aunna Dennis of Common Cause Georgia told the Senate committee.

"This is a tremendous victory for mail-in voters in Pennsylvania," Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement. "We are relieved that minor clerical errors will no longer prevent Pennsylvanians from having their votes counted. We look forward to seeing the impact that this ruling will have on future elections, particularly for communities of color and elderly Pennsylvanians."

"Every single vote that is put forward is counted but they aren't counted the same — they don't have the same value," said Penny Bernard Schaber, co-chair of Common Cause Wisconsin in Appleton and former Assembly member, at the rally.