News Clips

“Congress should also explore the idea of independent clemency boards to review clemency petitions and advise the president. This could eliminate biases and conflicts of interest inherent in the current system, which often relies on prosecutors at the Department of Justice to serve as a check on their own prosecutions. Members of such a clemency board should reflect our country's diversity and be representative of stakeholders inside and outside the criminal justice system,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause.

“It’s supremely ironic that something that gives rural, sparsely populated states so much power already would further kind of entrench minority rule and further make it difficult to access the ballot box,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. Keeping the filibuster in place and not passing sweeping voting reforms would have “profound downstream effects”, Spaulding added. “The American people chose new leaders; they want a responsive government,” he said. “To have essentially a minority of senators exercising veto power over the entire legislative process is just not gonna be tenable.”

Susan Lerner, executive director of the advocacy group Common Cause New York, said the state needed professionalized election administration staff who were hired based on their qualifications.

“Big time bait-and-switch by Donald Trump and a bunch of other politicians lower in the food chain capitalizing on that opportunity — to rip their own supporters off, really,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a government watchdog group in Washington, D.C. “The donors who were defrauded by and large in November and December by team Trump — these were elderly Republican donors who …it’s just despicable to prey on that donor pool, in my opinion,” Ryan said.

“Texas already makes it harder to vote than any other state. Rep. Briscoe being put in charge of the Elections Committee is a clear signal that the politicians in charge intend to make it even harder,” Anthony Gutierrez, the head of Common Cause Texas, a non-partisan public-interest group, said in a statement. “We’ll be fighting to stop them at every step.”

The fundraising numbers signal just how potent the election fraud argument became with Trump's most loyal supporters, experts told ABC News. Paul S. Ryan, a vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a Washington-based good-government group, called the fundraising effort deceptive. "It was based entirely on fraud ... by Team Trump alleging that there were problems in the election, that Trump needed money to hire lawyers to fight and that he won the election," Ryan said. "And in my experience watchdogging money in politics closely for more than 20 years, this is unprecedented."