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Center for Public Integrity: Voters in jail face ‘de facto disenfranchisement’
“That is creating a system where if you are rich enough, you can access your right to vote, because you’ll be able to get out of pretrial detention,” said Sylvia Albert of Common Cause. “And if you aren’t rich enough, then you can’t access your right to vote.”
Found in: Common Cause
Ohio Capital Journal: Discussions underway to propose new redistricting reform to Ohio voters
“This process could have worked,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio. “It should have worked, and we have constitutional officers who have refused to actually follow what Ohio voters have put in the (state) constitution.” “You’re talking about these folks, they’re drunk on power,” Turcer said. “And when people are drunk, what do you do? You take away their car keys.” ... “What is super clear to me is that the Ohio Constitution gives us the opportunity to tackle change if the state legislature is not willing to do so,” Turcer said.
Found in: Common Cause
Salon: Experts warn Supreme Court supporting 'dangerous' GOP legal theory could destroy US democracy
Speaking of the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court hearing of Moore v. Harper during a Monday webinar co-hosted by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Kathay Feng, national redistricting director at Common Cause, said that "the date has yet to be set, but what we do know is the question at issue: Whether state legislatures should be given absolute and supreme power to create voting laws and redistricting maps for congressional elections." Feng blasted what she called the GOP's "down and dirty" map rigging as "illegal and unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders with devastating consequences for voters, particularly Black voters, and their ability to elect candidates of their choice." "The danger is not just that partisan political leaders will be able to draw lines without any kind of checks, but also that we the people will no longer have a representative government," she asserted. "Our government will be of, by, and for the politicians, not regular people."
Found in: Common Cause
Boston Globe: In R.I., new pattern of voting methods taking shape
John M. Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said the state will need a few election cycles to gauge what the new permanent voting pattern will be, but this year is bound to see an increased percentage of voters casting ballots by mail and early voting as compared to pre-pandemic levels. “In 2020, tens of thousands of people tried voting early or by mail for the first time and many of them liked it,” Marion said. “And that is what we have seen in other states: As you make voting more convenient and provide other forms of voting, people take advantage of the opportunity.”
Found in: Common Cause
New Results: Common Cause Releases "Our Democracy 2022" Candidate Surveys for First Election Since January 6th
Common Cause today released initial results of its Our Democracy 2022 candidate questionnaire in the leadup to the first election since January 6th. With two months to go before Election Day, more than 100 candidates for Congress, including in certain swing House and Senate races, responded on how they promise to defend and strengthen our democracy.
Found in: Common Cause
Media Briefing: How Our Fight to Put People Over Politics Brought Us to the U.S. Supreme Court
National and local experts describe the dangers the upcoming Moore v. Harper case poses to elections and the freedom to vote.
Found in: Common Cause
Boston Globe: Attack ad aimed at boosting Gorbea draws fresh fire
John M. Marion, executive director Common Cause Rhode Island, on Friday said his organization is considering filing a complaint with the state Board of Elections over the ad, which is titled “Who’s Worse?” Common Cause pushed for a 2012 political spending transparency law in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, and the law requires ads by outside groups to list the top five donors to those groups. But Marion noted that the Latino Victory Fund ad did not list its top donors. “That is clearly violating the state’s disclosure law,” Marion said. “That is one of the issues we are considering filing a complaint about.”
Found in: Common Cause
Salon: Election officials preparing for worst-case scenarios: Violence around the midterms
Threats have become so commonplace that election clerks consider it a part of their job, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. "These election administrators keep saying that they report things to law enforcement or local DAs and nothing happens, like nobody's being prosecuted," Gutierrez said. Common Cause, which does election protection work, is also looking at potential ways to hold people who attack election workers accountable. What has complicated that task, Gutierrez and others say, is that numerous people in leadership positions keep casting doubt on the way elections are administered. For an elected state official to embrace that narrative, Gutierrez said, "really perpetuates this feeling that the people running our elections are doing something wrong, or trying to rig the elections. Just naturally, that's going to create an environment where you're asking for some kind of violence to happen."
Found in: Common Cause
WHYY: Delaware’s first ‘election protection’ program launches ahead of state’s primary vote
Common Cause of Delaware executive director Claire Snyder-Hall says the poll monitors will be in place in Wilmington, Dover, Lewes, and Rehoboth Beach. “One of the reasons we’re happy to have the election protection field program on the ground this year is because a lot of the voting laws have changed recently,” Snyder-Hall said. Changes include an expansion of early voting, vote by mail, same-day registration, and no registration deadlines. “Consequently, we expect that some voters might be confused by all those changes, and we are here to help,” she said, adding that volunteers will be able to ensure everyone can exercise their freedom to vote. “Several years ago when I voted, it was voting in Rehoboth. I was told that I had to show a driver’s license to vote,” said Synder-Hall. “And that’s actually not Delaware law.”
Found in: Common Cause
Associated Press: Support of false election claims runs deep in 2022 GOP field
“I don’t want to give them more power than they actually have to undermine us and our faith in the election process,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for expanded voter access. “We have a huge infrastructure with thousands of election officials and checks and balance. In places where there are bad intentions to harm voters, we are all working to ensure those don’t happen.”