2123 Search Results Containing ":"
Washington Post: You thought the Supreme Court’s last term was bad? Brace yourself.
Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, representing Common Cause in the case, told the court the opponents’ arguments “hang on a hyper-literal reading of the word ‘Legislature’ that ignores that word’s context, constitutional structure, and precedent,” adding, “the original understanding of ‘Legislature’ … contemplated a governing body defined and bounded by state constitutional limits.” It’s hard to have much confidence that such originalist arguments will persuade the court’s self-described originalists.
Found in: Common Cause
New York Post: Failed New York panel gets second chance to redraw Assembly lines
“We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends. Skip to appointment of special master who is familiar with New York immediately and stop wasting New Yorkers time and money with a useless bipartisan commission that defaults to the Legislature,” Susan Lerner, executive director of the good government group Common Cause New York, said in a statement.
Found in: Common Cause
Insider: Another Democratic lawmaker has violated a federal conflict-of-interest and transparency law by not disclosing a stock trade for weeks
Reasons for these violations range from lawmakers "being sloppy to just not caring about stock disclosure," said Aaron Scherb of nonpartisan government reform group Common Cause.
Found in: Common Cause
Newsweek: Clarence Thomas Failing to Note Wife Ginni's $680k Side Income Resurfaces
Law professor Michele Goodwin shared the 2011 article from The Los Angeles Times on Twitter on Monday and tagged Common Cause, the watchdog group that initially reported on Thomas' failure to disclose his wife's income from the Heritage Foundation. Retweeting Goodwin, Common Cause wrote: "We reviewed Justice Thomas' financial disclosure filings years ago and found that he failed to disclose his wife's income ($686,589) from the Heritage Foundation. We'll keep calling out Ginni Thomas until we have an ethical Supreme Court."
Found in: Common Cause
Insider: Nancy Pelosi's congressional stock trading ban has a massive blind trust loophole and is too broad, ethics experts warn
Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, generally praised the legislation as strong, if imperfect, particularly in its proposed increases in penalties for violating the law. "It would go a long way to give more than just a slap on the wrist to people who don't comply with the STOCK Act, which should really help compliance overall," Scherb said. He also said he's glad the bill strengthens rules for all branches of the government, not just Congress, and that he's not concerned that it includes Supreme Court justices — a provision that some government reformers say will "poison" the bill among Senate Republicans who might otherwise be inclined to support it. "The House shouldn't project what might or might not happen in the Senate," he said.
Found in: Common Cause
Columbia Journalism Review: The social-media platforms, the “Big Lie,” and the coming elections
“The ‘big lie’ has become embedded in our political discourse, and it’s become a talking point for election-deniers to preemptively declare that the midterm elections are going to be stolen or filled with voter fraud,” Yosef Getachew, a media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog, told the Post in August. “What we’ve seen is that Facebook and Twitter aren’t really doing the best job, or any job, in terms of removing and combating disinformation that’s around the ‘big lie.’”
Found in: Common Cause
Miami Herald/McClatchy: Republicans block probe of contributions by Chinese elites to Trump PAC through spa operator
Complaints against Li “Cindy” Yang, who raised campaign cash and parlayed persistence to gain access to Republican circles in Florida and get pictures taken with the then-president, were filed by Common Cause, a Washington-based watchdog group, and the Campaign Legal Center. The dismissal of those complaints came three years after the Miami Herald first revealed Yang’s activities in a series of articles titled Trump Tourism.
Found in: Common Cause
NPR (AUDIO): In many states, there's a process to fix an error with your ballot
Voters make mistakes. Oftentimes ballots don't get returned by the deadline required by the state. But Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at Common Cause, says many voters also get tripped by requirements on a mail ballot. Depending on where you live, your state might require you to provide a signature that matches one on file, voter ID information such as a driver's license, or a date. She says all these "little checks" are opportunities for human error. Plus, Albert says, voting at home means you are on your own, for the most part. "You don't have an election worker there who can answer any questions you have or direct you to anyone else who can help," she says. "You are just alone on your kitchen table." Sometimes, Albert says, voters completely miss the field to provide their ID information or their signature. Other times, election officials have a hard time checking ID numbers or signatures against what's in their system. ... Common Cause's Albert says it also depends what your state allows local officials to do when they are trying to contact voters. "Some of that is set in state law," Albert says, "and some legislatures are not really interested in providing more leeway to election officials to reach out to those voters."
Found in: Common Cause
Charlotte Observer: NC case at Supreme Court ‘should keep every American up at night,’ ex-AG Eric Holder says
Bob Phillips, director of Common Cause North Carolina, said court oversight is important. He noted that every election here in the last decade was held using Republican-drawn maps that were later ruled unconstitutional, for either racial or partisan gerrymandering. “We feel strongly that the state courts should not be taken out of the equation,” Phillips said in a media briefing this month. His briefing, as well as Holder’s, focused mostly on turning the national media’s attention toward the North Carolina case. Reporters for outlets like CNN, NBC, CBS and Politico attended. Kathay Feng, who leads Common Cause’s national redistricting efforts, said it’s not only Republican-led states that gerrymander their congressional maps. She pointed to New York and Maryland as examples of Democratic gerrymandering.
Found in: Common Cause
Star Tribune: 'Rigged' election defines GOP hopeful
"Where we take issue is when any candidate utilizes information they know is false, data they know is suspect at best, to try and move a particular policy agenda that they know is in no way, shape or form doing anything to improve access to the ballot," said Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, a nonpartisan voting rights group that typically doesn't weigh in on specific races. In August, Common Cause Minnesota issued a statement rebuking Crockett for comments she made during a radio interview railing against proposed election law changes and telling listeners, "This is our 09/11." Crockett told the Star Tribune that she meant the proposed changes should be a "wake-up call" for Republicans and then claimed to be victim of a "hit piece."