Voting Rights

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.

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.

Redistricting reformers scored big wins in Michigan and Missouri last week.

“Judge Drain’s decision makes clear that the Michigan legislature intentionally discriminated against African Americans for partisan political purposes,” said Common Cause president, Karen Hobert Flynn.

Today a federal judge struck down a 2015 bill passed by the Michigan legislature and signed by Governor Snyder to ban straight-ticket voting. Common Cause joined the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Democratic Party of Michigan, and Michigan voters challenging the law in court.