News Clips

“This is Jim Crow in a suit and a tie,” Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, told The Times. Dennis said the data her group has studied show the effects of the proposed restrictions would have the greatest impact upon Black and other minority voters. “This is definitely an attack on the voting freedoms and the gains we’ve made in the last 60 years,” she said.

Despite those warnings, Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group, said that Democrats needed to keep every option on the table. “Senate Democrats have the majority and they need to have the ability to govern,” he said. “This idea that it can be costless to filibuster, that you can essentially raise your hands behind closed doors and grind everything to a halt, is unacceptable.”

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said ID requirements for obtaining absentee ballots, would harm older voters, those who are low-income, and college students because they are all less likely to have driver's licenses or other forms of required identification, such as passports or a state or federal photo identification card. Georgia Republicans "are saying that voting should be for the 1% and ... for the privileged," Dennis told CNN.

Trump could use money in his political action committees to pay for the plane upgrades, or other expenses, experts say. "PACs are often used as slush funds," said Paul S. Ryan, an expert on campaign finance and a top lawyer at Common Cause, a good governance non-profit. "Campaign finance law doesn't require PAC money to be used for political purposes, leaving open the possibility that Trump could use PAC funds to pay for private plane repairs."

However, critics like Stephen Spaulding with the watchdog group Common Cause, call it voter suppression. “In the wake of that record turn-out, we are seeing a backlash in some states that are looking to really curtail that access to the ballot box,” said Spaulding. In Washington, there’s a dueling effort by Congressional Democrats intended to expand voter access. The “For the People Act”, or H.R.1, is a sweeping reform bill that could put an end to those state voting restrictions. “It sets a national uniform standard,” said Spaulding. “So, no matter what zip code you live in, you will have access to those basic standards like two weeks of early voting, vote by mail if you want to do it, and automatic voter registration.”

"If the result in Ohio had been that Biden won, it is extremely difficult for me to imagine that we wouldn't have a dozen bills already in the legislature now," said Mia Lewis of Common Cause Ohio, a nonpartisan democracy watchdog. ... In Pennsylvania, where a slew of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies challenging Biden's electoral victory failed to pass muster in the courts, Republicans are now targeting the methods by which judges in the state are elected. "Our understanding is there is a significant amount of animosity toward the appellate courts by the Republicans, and it came about in legislation," said Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause in Pennsylvania. "It's a direct response to the results of the November election," Ali said. "There's an idea going out that if democracy doesn't give you what you want, it must be broken."