Press Release

The legal teams taking two gerrymandering cases to the Supreme Court will preview their strategies and path to victory at third annual Common Cause redistricting conference. Voting rights experts agree momentum is in their favor as they aim to revolutionize redistricting before the 2020 Census.

Today’s District Court ruling is a victory for equal representation for every resident of the United States. Americans expect and deserve a fair and accurate census and the removal of the citizenship question will help ensure that occurs. The citizenship question would have driven down participation, resulting in undercounts that would have undermined the fundamental constitutional principal of equal representation.

Today, Common Cause released a new report on the many ways presidential candidates bend and break campaign finance laws as they barnstorm early primary states, fundraise, evade contributions limits, and build their campaign teams while denying they are running for office. “‘Testing the Waters’ or Diving Right In?” is part of Common Cause’s 2020 Candidate Watch project through which the organization will watchdog candidate compliance with and government enforcement of campaign finance laws during the current election cycle.

This is an opportunity to hear directly from the legal teams who will argue against partisan gerrymandering at the U.S. Supreme Court and the activists and academics who are paving the way for fair maps, said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for Common Cause.

The Supreme Court today announced that it will hear Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek and potentially set a national precedent on how to draw fair maps for congressional candidates in time for the redistricting triggered by the 2020 census.

Americans across the country have been demanding and passing democracy reforms at the state and local level, and they expect the same from their representatives in Congress. The opportunity to move a series of hearings and a mark-up of the For the People Act (H.R. 1) marks the first viable move in nearly a decade to respond to overwhelming public demand for sweeping reforms. The proposed legislation offers a broad set of democracy reforms at a time when government of, by, and for the people is under siege.