Voting Rights

Stephen Spaulding, a senior counsel at Common Cause, said that engaged Democratic voters were attuned to the filibuster, the Senate’s signature procedural weapon that requires a 60-vote supermajority to advance most bills. “They will have serious questions if it’s not reformed and there is no action to protect voting rights or reproductive rights, both of which are under attack in states across the country,” he said. “They will ask the question: ‘Why did you care more about a Senate rule than these priorities?’”

Kathay Feng, director of redistricting and representation with Common Cause, said the bar on partisan redistricting will nix a frequent excuse for maps that otherwise negatively affect minority voters. “It will eliminate the most extreme partisan gerrymanders, and it will send a clear signal to those that are drawing the lines that they can no longer use that as their escape valve for all the manipulation they’re doing,” she said. 

"It's a very bold bill," Steve Spaulding, senior counsel for Public Policy & Government Affairs at Common Cause, told Insider. "It is still a sweeping, bold bill with many of the main pillars of the For The People Act in it."  "I think there is room for common ground, but at the end of the day, given that we're talking about the fundamental freedom to vote, we need to give Senator Manchin room to bring along the Republicans that will see the wisdom of supporting this revised bill," Spaulding said. "But at the end of the day, if that doesn't happen, we do think it's incumbent upon the majority to find a path forward to get this bill to the president's desk." 

Government watchdog Common Cause is backing the Freedom to Vote Act, introduced by the Democrats in Congress on Tuesday, which would ban removing election officials for partisan political purposes. "His Big Lie has just been metastasizing and really undermining trust in our elections in a way that is very dangerous," Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel at the organization, told AFP. But Spaulding believes the greatest remedy to electoral dark arts remains robust turnout at the ballot box. "In 2020, we had the highest voter turnout in more than a century in the middle of a pandemic, so voters really showed up," he said. "So ultimately, voters need to continue to show up in record numbers."