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Associated Press: Legal experts baffled by sentence for registering to vote
Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for the government watchdog group Common Cause, said the case shows how states can fail to educate people about voting rights and voter reenfranchisement. She also called the sentence excessive and said Moses’ race is likely a factor. “It is well understood and well known that the criminal justice system is harsher on Black and brown defendants than it is on white defendants, and there’s plenty of research to show that,” Albert said.
Found in: Common Cause
Reuters: Analysis: In U.S. battle over redistricting, competition is the biggest loser
"When politicians draw lines that lock in the winners for the rest of the decade, it creates a disillusionment among voters that elections may not matter, because our voices won't be heard," said Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for the good government group Common Cause. And without the political middle represented in Congress, "you end up with a dysfunctional body," she said.
Found in: Common Cause
VIDEO LINK & QUOTES from Today’s Media Briefing: The Path Forward for Voting Rights in the States
Today, redistricting experts from Common Cause and Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s briefed the media on the state-level victories in the fight to secure fair maps and protect voting rights.
Found in: Common Cause
CNN: 'It's just a mess': Texas election officials and voting rights advocates face mounting challenges under new restrictive voting law
"Unfortunately, we had a Republican legislature so determined to make it harder to vote that there just was not any thought given to implementation," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. "At every level, this is just a mess." Common Cause Texas, like other local groups, has set up a hotline and is calling on voters to educate themselves on the new law. Gutierrez said advocates are also suggesting voters include both ID numbers on their application to ensure they aren't rejected.
Found in: Common Cause
Inside Sources/Tribune News Service (Op-Ed): The Fight for Voting Rights Goes On
The fight for voting rights goes on, even though every Senate Republican, joined by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), tried to shut it down on January 19. They refused to adjust a Senate rule best known for obstructing civil rights legislation. The filibuster rule – requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation if any senator objects – has been modified or waived more than 160 times in recent decades. Just in December, an exception was granted for legislation dealing with the debt ceiling, with the support of Manchin and Sinema and some Republicans. Yet somehow they decided voting rights were not important enough to warrant any adjustments to the rule.
Found in: Common Cause
Florida Times-Union: Ron DeSantis, critics fight over asking Florida Supreme Court to weigh in on redistricting
Henry Coxe III, an attorney for Common Cause Florida and Fair Districts Now, contended the Florida Constitution does not provide the governor with the right to ask the court to advise him whether he should veto a hypothetical congressional redistricting bill. “Any other result would implicate the constitutional principle of separation of powers by entangling the (Supreme) Court in the legislative drafting process,” Coxe wrote. “This request seeks an advisory opinion purportedly to inform his possible, hypothetical, exercise of his legislative veto power on a bill that has not yet been drafted, much less passed by both houses of the Legislature or presented to the governor for signing,” Coxe wrote. “In this context, it is well-settled that the governor’s query about his veto power asks about a legislative function not susceptible to an advisory opinion. Such a request for guidance from this court before a bill is passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor is improper.”
Found in: Common Cause
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio Supreme Court again rejects Republicans’ state legislative maps
Catherine Turcer, director of Common Cause Ohio and a longtime anti-gerrymandering advocate, praised the ruling. "Today's ruling is clear: gerrymandered maps have no place in the state of Ohio," Turcer said in a statement. "Now that the Ohio Redistricting Commission is back to square one, we ask that they finally stop and listen to the voters' demands for a fair redistricting process."
Found in: Common Cause
NC Policy Watch: NC high court tosses GOP redistricting plans and orders new ones
“Today’s ruling is an unequivocal win for North Carolina’s Black voters who were most harmed by this extreme partisan gerrymander,” Allison Riggs, a lawyer with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said in a statement. Riggs represented Common Cause. “At every level, North Carolina’s GOP leadership diluted representation of communities of color to entrench their own political power in ways that were both obvious and egregious,” her statement said.
Found in: Common Cause
The Guardian: Republicans call January 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’ as party censures Cheney and Kinzinger
“January 6 was an insurrection that left dead and scores of seriously injured in its wake. It was not legitimate political discourse no matter what the GOP says,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of the group Common Cause. “It was a violent attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and ignore the will of the people. It was a dangerous and irresponsible attempt to try to intimidate Congress with an angry racist mob assembled and then set loose by a man who had just lost the presidential election.” Flynn accused the RNC of attempting to normalize political violence, and she described the vote to censure Cheney and Kinzinger over their work investigating the insurrection as “anti-democratic”.
Found in: Common Cause
WRAL: NC's constitution doesn't promise 'fair' elections
Attorney Allison Riggs, who is representing plaintiff Common Cause in the redistricting case, says that even though the state constitution doesn’t explicitly require fair elections, case law clearly does. “I’ve certainly studied the history,” she said, “and there is not a suggestion anywhere that the failure to put ‘fair’ in the constitution means that there's a presupposition that elections will be run unfairly.” Riggs says constitutional provisions have to be understood together in context. “In cases interpreting free elections, there's frequently also an equal protection claim associated with that that really talks about how we have to treat people equally and fairly,” Riggs said. “Sometimes you can miss the forest for the trees.”