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Marie Claire: Ballot Drop Boxes: A Guide for the 2022 Midterm Elections
“It's really creating two Americas,” says Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause. “One where your vote is attempted to be suppressed and one where you’re being provided with more access to the ballot.” ... “This is designed specifically to make sure that many of the absentee ballots that are cast will not be counted simply because they didn't get there in time or were not returned properly,” explains Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. “The calculation in Wisconsin by the Republicans is that more Democrats vote by absentee ballot overall than Republicans so they view it in their interests to be able to restrict how absentee ballots are returned. By getting rid of all the drop boxes, their calculation is that this will help them.”
Found in: Common Cause
Associated Press: DeSantis eases voting rules in counties devastated by Ian
“It’s literally about removing barriers when people are in a state of incredible hardship and in displacement,” said Amy Keith of Common Cause Florida. “Just making it so they can do their civic duty, they can go out and exercise their right to vote.”
Found in: Common Cause
Associated Press: EXPLAINER: Trying to get politics out of election certifying
Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections with Common Cause, said voter advocacy groups are prepared to intervene should partisan actors interfere with certification without justification or if a secretary of state refuses to seek a court order compelling a local board to act. “That is why we are here, and there will be lot of advocates and lawyers willing and able to step in and file if the secretary is not interested in using their authority or their position to ensure that the votes of their constituents are counted,” Albert said.
Found in: Common Cause
ProPublica/Miami Herald: DeSantis broke Florida precedent and maybe the law, too, in making congressional map
The court’s decision in Rucho v. Common Cause barred federal court challenges to partisan gerrymanders. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said it was not an issue for the federal judiciary to decide, but emphasized the ruling did not “condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void.” In fact, the issue was being actively addressed at the state level, Roberts wrote. He cited Florida’s amendment and one of Pariente’s opinions. Responding to liberal justices who wanted to reject Rucho’s map as an unconstitutional gerrymander, Roberts wrote they could not because “there is no ‘Fair Districts Amendment’ to the Federal Constitution.”
Found in: Common Cause
Texas Tribune: How the debunked conspiracy film “2000 Mules” became Texas Republican orthodoxy
Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the Texas chapter of the watchdog group Common Cause, said the showing of the film by Paxton’s office is particularly concerning because of Paxton’s longstanding embrace of unfounded voter fraud conspiracies — and his role in prosecuting electoral crimes, which are exceedingly rare. (Since 2005, the Texas Attorney General’s website says the office has prosecuted 155 people for 534 election fraud offenses — good for about 0.0048% of the 11.1 million Texas votes cast in the 2020 presidential contest alone, and not even a rounding error’s worth of all votes cast in the state over the last 17 years.) “Paxton hosting a watch party for this completely debunked work of fiction is next-level disinformation,” Gutierrez said. “It’s not like (Paxton) is a person who has no impact on elections — he is constantly doing things to impact elections. … It’s all kinds of alarming and sets off all the red flags.”
Found in: Common Cause
Associated Press: Wisconsin judge blocks absentee ballot spoiling
This is not a common policy across the country, and only a few states do something similar due to logistical challenges associated with pre-processing of ballots, according to Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for the nonpartisan voter advocacy group Common Cause.
Found in: Common Cause
Bloomberg: Pelosi Urges FCC to Scrutinize $5.4 Billion Tegna Takeover
“It’s hard to see the FCC approving this deal, given the evidence against it and given that key members of Congress have voiced their concern,” Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy program director at the advocacy group Common Cause, said in an interview. Common Cause has asked the FCC to deny the merger.
Found in: Common Cause
Center for Public Integrity: Rhode Island eases absentee ballot restrictions, but strict voter ID remains
Common Cause Rhode Island and the League of Women Voters of Rhode Island sued the state to strip signature requirements for good. “It was waived in 2020 and for fall elections, and sure enough, we set a record for number of mail ballots,” said John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. “Part of that is that it was the height of the pandemic. But we think we’re going to see a permanent shift in an increase of voting by mail.”
Found in: Common Cause
Center for Public Integrity: A headlong rush by states to attack voting access — or expand it
The attacks on access have targeted methods disproportionately used by people of color and younger, more Democratic-leaning voters. “These are direct attacks on voters that legislators think will vote for the other party,” said Sylvia Albert of Common Cause. “It is clearly an attack on Black and brown and low-income voters.”