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Roll Call: 2022 races will put election integrity to the test
“We still have the Trump Big Lie that is metastasizing,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause. “Trust is the glue that really holds the system together. When it starts to erode, it really threatens the whole system.” Groups, such as Spaulding’s, are gearing up for big efforts ahead of the midterms to combat election disinformation. They plan to dispatch nonpartisan poll monitors and scrub social media of inaccurate information, especially about dates, places and ways of voting.
Found in: Common Cause
The Fulcrum: Report suggests plan for limiting election disinformation
Eight months after Inauguration Day, one-third of Americans told pollsters they still believed Donald Trump actually won the election and that Joe Biden stole it away from the incumbent. A new report offers a mix of government and corporate reforms to limit the spread and influence of such election disinformation. The Common Cause Education Fund, an affiliate of the democracy reform advocacy group Common Cause, issued a report in late October reviewing the state of disinformation campaigns and a series of recommendations designed to stem the tide. "Just as we came together last year, rising up to vote safely and securely in record numbers during a global pandemic, we must now rise up to stop election disinformation efforts in future elections," the researchers wrote.
Found in: Common Cause
San Antonio Express-News (Op-Ed): Texas needs an independent redistricting commission
This year's process and these maps were approved against our will. In more than 10 hours of testimony on congressional plans, not a single Texan spoke in favor of the draft maps. Without reform, we're bound to repeat this flawed process in another 10 years. It's time to put an end to a process that allows the politicians to choose which Texans they want to represent.
Found in: Common Cause
The Guardian: They had a plan to unrig US elections. Things are not going as expected
Nextdoor in Ohio, reformers are closely monitoring what happens in Michigan. Catherine Turcer, the executive director of the Ohio chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, has been working for decades to get Ohio to adopt a new process for redistricting. Just as they did in Michigan, Republican lawmakers carved up the state in 2011 to give themselves a majority in the state legislature and a 12-4 advantage in the state’s delegation. Over the last few decades, Ohioans repeatedly voted down redistricting reform proposals, including a 2012 effort to create an independent redistricting commission. But in 2015, Turcer and other reformers in the state achieved a breakthrough. Voters approved a constitutional amendment that gave redistricting power for state legislative districts to a seven-person panel of elected officials from both parties. It required the panel to make its decisions in public and set out several criteria the panel must follow, including one that says districts can’t “unduly favor or disfavor a party or incumbents”. “I look back and I felt like pigs were flying around the statehouse,” Turcer said. But this is the first year that the new rules have been in effect and Turcer watched with horror last month as Republicans ignored the new guardrails and drew severely gerrymandered maps anyway. Overriding Democratic objections, the panel adopted a plan that would give Republicans a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature. Even though Republicans have consistently received around 54% of the statewide vote over the last decade, Republicans said they should be entitled to as many as 81% of the seats in the state legislature. Their rationale for that was sketchy – they said they were entitled to such a high vote share because they won 81% of the 16 previous statewide elections.
Found in: Common Cause
Associated Press: Hawaii’s top court rules against ‘gut and replace’ bills
“This is a good decision, not just for the people, but also we think for the Legislature itself; for real, thoughtful decision making,” said Sandy Ma, the executive director of Common Cause Hawaii, one of the two groups that filed the lawsuit. Bills became law without lawmakers and the public having sufficient opportunity to understand and debate their contents when the Legislature used “gut and replace,” Ma said. The ruling will restore trust in the legislative process because sometimes people think lawmakers have engaged in horse trading when a bill has been gutted and replaced without public discussion, Ma said.
Found in: Common Cause
CNN: North Carolina GOP-controlled legislature approves congressional map
"We are troubled that these districts would especially hurt Black voters, harmfully split communities and undermine the freedom of North Carolinians to have a voice in choosing their representatives," said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina.
Found in: Common Cause
NPR (AUDIO): In the wake of 2020, election officials are beleaguered
Anthony Gutierrez with Common Cause Texas says whether this is a good thing kind of depends. ANTHONY GUTIERREZ: You know, it really can go both ways. I mean, you see some election administrators who do a really good job because they're professionals who stay in that job for decades in some cases. LOPEZ: But, Gutierrez says, sometimes appointments can be pretty political. For example, he says, Governor Greg Abbott recently appointed a new elections chief for the state who was part of President Trump's legal team trying to overturn 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Gutierrez says, in those situations, voters can't weigh in at the ballot box to vote someone out. He says this is why he thinks for this model to work, there needs to be transparency. GUTIERREZ: With this type of an appointment system, you really need to have citizens involved. You need to have a public, transparent interview process, where you have multiple candidates that people can interact with.
Found in: Common Cause
Daily Beast: Gabby Giffords Sues the NRA Over Secret GOP Donation Scheme
The sense of relief was shared by Paul Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at watchdog Common Cause, who told The Daily Beast that in the federal campaign finance world, “there’s no cop on the beat.” “For too long the FEC, primarily due to GOP Commissioners blocking agency action, has allowed massive violations of campaign finance law to go unpunished. Political players in Washington know there’s no cop on the beat. They cross legal lines, get away with it, and then commit even more egregious violations,” Ryan said. He explained that, in response to complaints, “the FEC drags its feet for years”—often allowing the five-year statute of limitations to expire, after which the agency cannot haul violators into court. “Outrageously, commissioners then sometimes acknowledge that violations occurred, but that the FEC has run out of time to do anything about it,” Ryan continued. “The Campaign Legal Center and Giffords aren’t taking it anymore. This is vitally important work to hold lawbreakers accountable—work the FEC should be doing, but isn't. Godspeed.”
Found in: Common Cause
New York Times: Why New Yorkers Rejected Ballot Proposals on Voting and Redistricting
Susan Lerner, the executive director of the civic watchdog group Common Cause New York and a proponent of all three initiatives, argued that the success of Republican and Conservative attacks highlighted the fragility of democracy itself. “There was a strong anti-democratic push and the pro-democracy folks stayed home,” she said. Finally, as written, the ballot questions, which required voters to flip their ballots over to weigh in, were hard to understand, according to Common Cause and like-minded groups. “The ballot language for 1, 3, and 4 was frankly impenetrable,” Ms. Lerner said of the three measures that went down to defeat.
Found in: Common Cause
Ballotpedia: Colorado Supreme Court approves state’s new congressional map
Jennifer Parenti, Northern Colorado organizer for Colorado Common Cause, said, “Communities of color make up about 30% of the state’s population overall. But unfortunately, this proposed congressional map does not reflect that diversity. It, rather, splits our communities of color across multiple districts, while seemingly prioritizing municipal boundaries and protecting incumbents.”