Voting Rights

"It was very shocking to see this attempt to have artificial entities have voting rights," said Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of Common Cause Delaware, a watchdog group. "We're seeing voter suppression all over the county, and this is the flipside," she added. "It's not saying the residents of Seaford can't vote, but it's diluting their votes by allowing nonresidents to vote."

“Greg Abbott either didn’t read this bill closely enough to understand what it really does or is deliberately working to make it harder for Texans with disabilities to vote,” Katya Ehresman, the voting rights manager for Common Cause Texas, said in a statement.

"This is an issue that's going to continue to snowball," said Stephen Spaulding, VP of policy and external affairs at Common Cause. "There are tools the FEC could employ, but no question, there also has to be a comprehensive legislative response." Emma Steiner, disinformation analyst at Common Cause, told Axios that the group's biggest concern about generative AI is that platforms "are not willing to act on evolving disinformation narratives. So while [companies] can attempt to drop new policies ... I'm not sure they will make an actual serious attempt to counter the issue."

“What’s happened over the last six years, in particular since the Trump years, is there’s been a systematic attempt to undermine the work of the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. “Because it’s apparently not as responsive in a partisan way to the Republicans as they would like.”

Julia Vaughn is the executive director of Common Cause Indiana — a lobbying organization focused on voting rights and election issues. She said the current map does not properly or equitably represent residents within its districts. “People in the overpopulated district have less voting strength in city elections than the people in the underpopulated districts,” Vaughn said. “So what our lawsuit seeks to do is simply ensure that all voters in Anderson have the same say in their local elections.” Vaughn said this upholds the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. She explained that making Anderson more equitable for voters would mean one person to one vote, and not bearing the weight of overpopulated or underpopulated districts. The deadline for redistricting under state law was Dec. 31, 2022. Vaughn said there is very little oversight of the redistricting process, which means it’s often up to outside organizations to hold the government accountable in redistricting situations. “So, unfortunately, outside of litigation, no, there’s very little oversight of this and it’s really easy for local governments to get away with just punting on this fundamental responsibility that they have to their voters,” Vaughn said.