Voting Rights

“This is part of a broader strategy to make voting harder and impose the will of state legislatures regardless of the will of the people,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group. “It is a significant change to the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures.” ... Voting rights advocates point to that decision, specifically a quote from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., as evidence that the Supreme Court has previously believed state courts have an oversight role. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” in policing partisan gerrymandering, Roberts wrote for the majority in Rucho v. Common Cause.

Members of the nonpartisan organization Common Cause say they’ve tracked an increase in disinformation online in 2016 and 2018 with a significant surge in voting related disinformation during the 2020 election cycle. “Disinformation agents are seeking to keep voters from casting their ballots by spreading content designed to confuse voters about the time, place and manner how to vote, intimidate or harass them from going to the polls,” said Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy Program Director at Common Cause.

“In a radical power grab, self-serving politicians want to defy our state’s highest court and impose illegal voting districts upon the people of North Carolina,” said Bob Phillips of Common Cause, North Carolina, which brought the lawsuit that overturned the GOP-drawn maps. “We will continue to stand up for the people of our state and nation as this case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. We must stop this dangerous attack on our freedom to vote.”

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina case that threatens the future of voting rights.

Then-President Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows were warned repeatedly of anticipated violence on January 6th yet did nothing. They were informed of semi-automatic rifles and pistols - AR-15s and Glocks - being carried by members of the audience on the Ellipse, hours before his speech, yet Trump incited the crowd and called on his heavily armed audience to march on the Capitol and ‘fight like hell.’