News Clips

2023 was a challenging test of New York’s elections. Voters endured persistent legal fights over redistricting and a congressional election scandal that captured national attention. It’s no surprise that trust in government continues to decline nationwide. With changing congressional boundaries and a contentious election season looming, voters face an even busier year. That’s why lawmakers must work quickly to institute guardrails that address existing gaps in our laws and protect voters from the threat of undemocratic actors. Here’s how they can do that.

On Dec. 19, the North Carolina NAACP along with Common Cause, a nonpartisan nonprofit advocating for fair and transparent elections, and a group of eight residents filed a lawsuit against Republican mapmakers, including Philip Berger, Tim Moore and the State Board of Elections, for passing allegedly racially adjusted and rushed gerrymandered maps. Bob Phillips, the executive director at Common Cause North Carolina, said in an interview that minority communities, like the Black community, will not get to choose representation that they see fit and that will impact how and if their communities' needs get met. Phillips, who has been with the organization since 2001, has seen years of gerrymandering, but believes that in recent years the issue has gotten worse. This isn't necessarily a partisan problem, Phillips said, rather a problem of whoever is currently in power. "Twenty years ago, Democrats were gerrymandering, not quite as robustly as they are now because they didn't have the technology for one, but they were in charge of drawing the maps and Democrats at the time had no inclination to consider redistricting reform," Phillips said. "The irony was I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Republicans in North Carolina calling for redistricting reform when the Democrats were in charge. Fast forward to today and it's reversed."

Julia Vaughn, executive director of transparency and voting advocacy group Common Cause Indiana, said that 30-day timeframe is unfair. She worries the bill could catch people who become lawful citizens and voters whose names are still on the temporary list. “The failsafe has to move like clockwork right?” she said. “And in the real world, clockwork doesn’t always happen.”

In another Supreme Court filing Tuesday, the advocacy group Common Cause said the case is “a moment of truth for American democracy.” Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, “and his open and ongoing support, even today, for the insurrectionists and their cause poses the greatest danger to our free democratic system since the Civil War,” the group said.

Common Cause Georgia executive director Aunna Dennis called the measure a politically motivated bill that does not provide a clear roadmap of checks and balances it is supposed to adhere to. A better step would be to correct some of the deficiencies in last year’s bill that established the oversight commission, Dennis said in a statement. “Prosecutors who defend our state constitution should be able to do so safely,” she said. “How are prosecutors able to defend themselves from challenging corruption in our government without the proper protections?”

Laurel Brodzinsky, legislative director for California Common Cause, said Form 700 is an important tool for understanding how elected officials’ economic interests shape their decision-making. “We do think that having that transparency is really important for accountability,” Brodzinsky said. Brodzinsky of California Common Cause said there are reasonable limitations on what information is disclosed about elected officials and other public servants given the threat of violence. “We do understand the concerns of the privacy of the filer and they would not want their residential address out so publicly on the internet,” she said. But there are also legitimate reasons for making the real property interests of filers known, Brodzinsky argued. She pointed to an investigation last fall by the San Francisco Standard into a city building inspector who signed off on construction permits for his own home, which cited Form 700 records.